Collaborate Disseminate
The use of solar photovoltaic cells as a renewable energy source is booming, as the technology becomes more efficient and less expensive. Stacking perovskite solar cells on top of silicon ones is one way to increase the amount of sunlight harnessed, an… Continue reading New tandem perovskite-silicon solar cell breaks efficiency record
Tiny, semiconducting dots small enough to leverage the weirdness of quantum mechanics hold a lot of potential when it comes to solar power. These flexible, inexpensive quantum dots serving as photovoltaic material in place of the traditional silicon pr… Continue reading Huge leap in efficiency brings see-through solar skins into clear view
Greenhouses and solar panels both need to be placed in areas with a lot of sunlight – so why not combine the two? Semi-transparent solar cells could potentially be built into the glass roof panels of greenhouses, capturing light at wavelengths that pla… Continue reading Semi-transparent solar cells could make greenhouses self-sufficient
The Australian National Maritime Museum has installed the country’s largest lightweight solar panel roof on its Wharf 7, Heritage Centre. By using flexible, glass-free solar panels from SunMan Energy, buildings which previously were considere… Continue reading Light, flexible panel burns the rule book on where PV can be installed
If you’ve been around long enough, you’ll know there’s a long history of advances in materials science that get blown far out of proportion by both the technical and the popular media. Most of the recent ones seem to center on the chemistry of carbon, particularly graphene and nanotubes. Head …read more
Continue reading Perovskites: Not Just for Solar Cells Anymore
White LEDs were the technological breakthrough that changed the world of lighting, now they are everywhere. There’s no better sign of their cost-effective ubiquity than the dollar store solar garden light: a complete unit integrating a white LED with its solar cell and battery storage. Not content with boring white …read more
Continue reading Give Your Solar Garden Lights A Color Changing LED Upgrade
A word of warning: Google for the definition of the word “pummer” at your own risk. Rest assured that this beautiful solar-powered circuit sculpture fits the only definition of pummer that we care to deal with.
For the unfamiliar, a pummer is a device from the BEAM style of robotics, …read more
Continue reading Solar Circuit Sculpture Pumms the Night Away
The price of commercially made solar panels on eBay is around $1 per watt and have been for a few years, but the price of individual solar cells are likewise at a low price per watt, around $0.48. Looking at those prices, it’s tempting to say that it’d be cheaper to just buy the solar cells and put together your own panels. But is it? Simply adding up all the costs might seem like a good way to tell, but you’d need to make a panel to really see what works and what doesn’t.
| Part | US$ | Euros € |
|---|---|---|
| solar cells |
Every scrap of power is precious when it comes to power harvesting, and working with such designs usually means getting cozy with a microcontroller’s low-power tricks and sleep modes. But in the case of the Ultra Low Power Energy Harvester design by [bobricius], the attached microcontroller doesn’t need to worry about managing power at all — as long as it can finish its job fast enough.
The idea is to use solar energy to fill a capacitor, then turn on the microcontroller and let it run normally until the power runs out. As a result, a microcontroller may only have …read more
Continue reading Energy Harvesting Design Doesn’t Need Sleep
The idea of making your own semiconductors from scratch would be more attractive if it weren’t for the expensive equipment and noxious chemicals required for silicon fabrication. But simple semiconductors can be cooked up at home without anything fancy, and they can actually yield pretty good results.
Granted, [Simplifier] has been working on the method detailed in the video below for about a year, and a look at his post on copper oxide thin-film solar cells reveals a meticulous approach to optimize everything. He started with regular window glass, heated over a propane burner and sprayed with a tin oxide …read more
Continue reading Home Brew Solar Cells for the Chemically Curious