Solar Gets Flexible
Energy Refuge
A solar panel and a yoga mat not often appear in the samesentence. But future solar panels have been compared to mats as a newtechnology promises to deliver amazing flexibility and efficiency within five years.
According to a report on Boston.com, MicroContinuum, a company based in Cambridge, is developing in partnership with threeuniversities what it calls ‘nantennas’, which are designed to collectmore solar power than existing solar cells.
What the company envisages is a thin, flexible sheet that is cheap to produce. “Imagine a roll-up sheet, like a yoga mat, that you can tossover any structure, or roof tiles whose outermost layers are laced withnantennas”, the website wrote. According to the University of Missouri,one of the partners, they would be able to collect 90 percent ofavailable light.
“Our overall goal is to collect and utilize as much solar energy asis theoretically possible and bring it to the commercial market in aninexpensive package that is accessible to everyone,” Professor PatrickPinhero, an associate professor in the MU Chemical EngineeringDepartment, said in a statement.
Image: Via MicroContinuum
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