Researchers from the Netherlands, France and Portugal are working together on a European Union research project called H-Alpha Solar. And they have developed very thin flexible solar panels that can be woven into fabrics, reports the Scotsman in this article. In about three years, you'll be able to wear jackets that will recharge your phones while you walk. Or you'll become a very happy camper under a tent covered with flexible films of solar modules. No more batteries to carry! And there are even more good news. This will not empty your wallet. This technology is cheap, about $2 per watt. Read more. UPDATE (December 17, 2004): An alert reader named Julien posted a comment about this entry. A company based in Switzerland, Flexcell, is already selling flexible, custom-designed solar cells and modules. So you don't have to wait for three years to buy some.
The Scotsman decided to start its article with a touch of humor.
Mobile phone users left talking to themselves when their battery runs out in the middle of a call could soon see an end to their frustration as scientists perfect a way to recharge electrical equipment while on the move.
Researchers are investigating ways flexible solar panels can be sewn into clothing and other textiles so electrical equipment can be recharged without being connected to a mains supply.
According to the New Scientist magazine, the project could soon lead to a tent whose flysheet charges batteries all day so campers can have light all night, or a roll-out plastic sheet which powers cells to operate a DVD player.
The European Union research project called H-Alpha Solar is at the origin of this technology.
For more information about the H-Alpha Solar project, you can read this EUROPA press release about "European research on photovoltaics and biomass" or this presentation named "H-Alpha Solar: Thin film, silicon based, plastic foil Solar Modules"(PDF format, 12 pages, 1.18 MB). Below are some pictures extracted from this presentation.
Here is a pilot line producing these plastic foils solar modules (Credit: Gerrit Kroesen)
The human spirit is itself the most wonderful fairy tale that can possibly be. What a magnificent world lies enclosed within our bosoms! No solar orbit hems it in, the inexhaustible wealth of the total visible creation is outweighed by its riches!
—E. T. A. W. (Ernst Theodor Amadeus Wilhelm)
And here you can see several sheets of flexible solar modules, including a very small one in the middle (Credit: Gerrit Kroesen)
Finally, here are some usages for portable power in this photovoltaic market: clothing fabrics recharging your electronic devices. (Credit: Gerrit Kroesen)
Now, let's return to the Scotsman for some more details about the technology.
Gerrit Kroesen, a physicist at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, who led the development team, said: "This technology will be a lot easier to handle than the old glass solar panels."
His team has made its solar cells flexible simply by making them very thin, but the advance has also involved a degree of compromise in their ability to produce electricity efficiently. While cutting-edge solar panels now operate at an efficiency of about 20 per cent, the new flexible cells are only 7 per cent efficient. However, the manufacturers believe that the reduction in the generating capacity is worth accepting for a cell they believe will be more useful and robust.
So you'll wear jackets with solar panels in three years. But will this be expensive? Not at all, according to the researchers.
A projected full-scale manufacturing plant would produce panels at a cost of under £ 1 per watt (about $1.94 or 1.45 euro). As such, an A4 sized panel sewn into the back of a jacket and costing less than £ 7 (about $13 or 10 euros) would charge a mobile phone during a summer stroll in the countryside. Provided mobile users kept within range of the transmitting masts that relay a call to the networks, phones would never again be out of action.
Is this good or bad? You'll decide.
Why is it that writers, who by definition operate by the use of their imaginations, are given so little credit for it: we “make things up.” This is our trade. I remember, before I myself attempted this genre of space fiction, reading an agreeable tale about a species of highly intelligent giraffes who travelled by spaceship from their solar system to ours, to ask if our sun was behaving cruelly to us as theirs had recently taken to doing to them. I remember saying to myself: Well, at least the writer of this tale is not likely to get industrious letters asking what it is like to be a giraffe in a spaceship.
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
Sources: James Reynolds, The Scotsman, December 16, 2004; and various web sites
Related stories can be found in the following categories.
Energy
Environment
Physics
Wearable
Wireless.