Wednesday, 29 November 2017

The Future of Solar Panels

November 29, 2017
by

BY ADELE PETERS VIA FASTCOMPANY

You Can Fold Up These Nearly Unbreakable Solar Panels And Take Them With You: Conventional solar panels “are brittle because they’re crystalline,” Murat Okandan, CEO of mPower Technology, the startup making the new technology, tells Fast Company. “If you bend or flex them, at some point they’ll just break and shatter. By making our cells small and then interconnecting them we’re able to make them almost unbreakable.”

A typical solar panel–more than five feet long and encased in glass–isn’t exactly portable. But a new type of solar technology, miniaturized so that each cell is the size of a piece of glitter, could be used anywhere. The tiny cells are made from high-efficiency silicon, like standard solar panels. But the new form means that they’re not only small but flexible, and can be folded up for transportation, incorporated into clothing, or easily used in electronics.