Tag: solar

This super thin solar panel mobile charger is trending on kickstarter

Keeping your smartphone alive can be a little tricky when you are away from home. It gets worse when charging sockets are unavailable and even worse when you don’t possess a charger itself. Thanks to this new solar panel chargers, you can charge your smartphones and other gadgets without relying on the power outlets.

A new Solar charger by Yolk — called Solar Paper is exactly what the name suggests. It is thin as paper, and can charge any device which requires power up to 10 watts.

The 7.5-inches long, 3.5 wide and 1.5 thin – Solar Paper is real easy to carry around and can prove to be a lifesaver (for your smartphone obviously) when you need it the most. The one-the-go companion has 0.45-inch thick USB charging port at the top, which is connected to the solar panel, and acts as a gateway for power juice for your gadgets.

A nifty feature is Solar Panel’s auto restart. With similar gadgets, a passing cloud or sudden shadow shuts the charger down, forcing the manual reboot. But Solar Panel resets that automatically. You can use it to charge anything that connects with USB: GoPro, external batteries, Bluetooth speakers, digital cameras, and so on.

Each solar paper is capable of producing 2.5W, which is sufficient for charging an external battery or low energy devices like GoPro. To charge an iPhone you should have at least 2 solar paper connected to each other (using the magnetic connector on the paper which offers easy attachment/detachment), which is combined to produce 5W. You can connect up to 4 solar papers together to produce total of 10W of power.

There are a couple of other advantages of using magnets in Solar Paper, too. First, there’s no wear and tear when you fold or unfold the panels, greatly extending Solar Paper’s life. The magnets are also quite strong, so you can use them to mount Solar Paper to metal objects, as shown in the picture.

At the time of writing this article, this project has already raised more than $400,000 from 2,749 backers on Kickstarter. It still has 33 days to go before this campaign ends, by which this number is expected to be multiplied by 10.

Have a look at the official video, and a message from Sen Change, CEO, Yolk:

July 18, 2015
Transparent solar panel by UCLA can help create electricity generating windows

There has been a wide range of developments going on, which aims to create more eco-friendly buildings around us. Todays modern large and tall buildings has wider surface area for solar energy to be converted into the electricity — some scientists are working on the experiments to utilize this fact.

Transparent photovoltaics have yet to grace the face of your smartphones, but UCLA researchers are working on a new see-through solar cell that showing potential.

The new design uses a new type of polymer solar cell, which can help you design the solar window glasses to power the entire building efficiently in the future or manufacture a better solar collecting smartphones to charge them up automatically.

The team has been able to build a device that converts infrared light into electrical current. Current prototypes boast 4 percent energy conversion efficiency at 66 percent transparency — not so crystal clear, but certainly clean enough to peer through.

The technology is still a new kid – waiting to get into the adulthood — but we sure can expect a great amount of results from it. UCLA team said in a press release:

“These results open the potential for visibly transparent polymer solar cells as add-on components of portable electronics, smart windows and building-integrated photovoltaics and in other applications,” said study leader Yang Yang, a UCLA professor of materials science and engineering, who also is director of the Nano Renewable Energy Center at California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI).

“We are excited by this new invention on transparent solar cells, which applied our recent advances in transparent conducting windows (also published in ACS Nano) to fabricate these devices,” said Paul S.Weiss, CNSI director and Fred Kavli Chair in NanoSystems Sciences.

The team has to get some major issues to be fixed in the long run – like conversion rate per square meter and cost to manufacture the transparent photovoltaic cells. A 4% conversion efficiency equates to around 40W per square metre during the brightest part of a very bright day. Far too low for phone screens and even car roofs. The only way this technology can be made viable is if it can be applied to glass on the million-m² scale.

Whatever it is going to be, we sure are going to witness some futuristic technology undergoing the process of development.

what do you think? the technology can bring a wide range of possibilities for humans? or is it just another bunch of innovative idea which will never work practically?

[via engadget]

July 22, 2012
SSD solar panels doesn’t leak, which makes it a best alternate source

Today, the whole world started to notice the “natural resource” crisis and there has been no perfect solution to get rid of it. There are some traditional and dominating technology – which may prove to be useful if utilised at a massive rate.

Solar energy, wind energy, nanotech and some unexpected scientific method to generate electricity from virus – can really make the world green — if utilised properly.

All of the Alternate source of energy have some limitation and benefits, which defines their usability. Solar energy has been widely used since a very long time and a few major companies have adapted it to feed their power-hungry machines. It is a clean and unlimited source of energy which can minimize the pollution at a huge scale. The main disadvantage of using solar energy is – its liquid fuel. Solar panels tends to leak over a small period of time, which makes it less cost efficient.

Researchers at Northwestern University have found one way to stop the leak — get rid of the liquid used in solar panels. A new variation on the Gratzel Solar cell replaces a short-lived organic dye with a solid alternative.

The molecular dye the solid substance replaces was corrosive, at risk of leaking and only lasted about 18-months — by replacing it, researchers plan to pave the way for a more affordable (and less toxic) alternative.

Northwestern’s new design flaunts a 10.2-percent conversion efficiency, the highest ever recorded in a solid-state solar cell of its type — but that’s still only half of what traditional sun collectors can do. Researchers hope to improve conversion in the long run, but expect that the cost reduction alone will be enough to get the party going.

It may not be the greenest solar technology we’ve ever seen, but who are we to judge?

images/article/15001010/1502020120530/digitfreak/digitfreak_00187.jpg

May 30, 2012