You are probably familiar with the Fibonacci Sequence. It’s that pattern where you add up two previous numbers to make the next number, 1+1=2, 2+1=3, 3+2=5, 5+3=8, etc. It’s pretty neat to see the product of millenia of evolution in the branching of trees, the fruit sprouts of a pineapple and the arrangement of a pine cone. Several other examples have been recorded in nature, and to stumble upon one surely gives a sense of awe at finding some sort of order in the universe.

If it works for plants, why couldn’t it work for solar panels? Aiden Dwyer, a 13-year-old boy from Long Island, came to this conclusion as he was walking through the woods one winter day. Dwyer noticed a pattern in the way leaves and limbs grew from trees, and lo and behold! He discovered that when plants produce new growth, the growth follows a Fibonacci Sequence.

Dwyer, being a precocious and curious kid and knowing that trees use their leaves to photosynthesize, decided to see if the Fibonacci Sequence could be applied to solar panels. Dwyer constructed a tree-like apparatus using the sequence of leaves found on an oak tree. Except on his tree, Dwyer placed photovoltaic cells instead of leaves. He compared the amount of energy collected by his tree against a normal, flat array of solar cells.

As you may have guessed, the Fibonacci array gave 50 per cent more efficiency than a regular flat panel solar collector. Dwyer now has a provisional US patent and is surely being offered deals by companies eager to cash in on something similar. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had rows of tree-like structures to power our homes, instead of the solar cells some picky people don’t like to see in their neighbourhood?

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The idea is to patch these lightweight wearable solar panels onto the garb of the soldiers in the field. They can have them attached to their helmets, clothing, backpacks, tents, weapons, equipment and whatever else. The silver solar panels are somewhat bendable, so they should be able to wrap around the contours accordingly.

In doing so, the soldiers get a near constant supply of power for various electronics and communication equipment. It won’t be quite as useful for nighttime missions, but the stored power from the day could be still utilized. I think another concern would be, well, the solar panels kind of ruin the camouflage of their usual garb, don’t you think?

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We are on the way to reaching new heights of innovation with solar energy technology.  Solar Impulse, a program based out of Switzerland aims to fly around the world in a solar plane. Their next big step is an international flight from Payerne Switzerland to Brussels Belgium, a 500 km soar.

The carbon fiber Solar Impulse HB-SIA Plane has a 63.4 meter (208 feet) wingspan (equal to the Airbus A340) holds an array of over 11000 solar cells evenly distributed across the top of the wings and the horizontal stabilizer.   That’s over 2000 square feet of solar panels up in the air.  These collect as much solar energy during the day as possible and stores that energy into ultra lightweight battery packs, the plane wings are made of carbon fibre to reduce weight while increasing strength and stability.

The question of energy defines the entire project. At midday, each square metre of land surface, in the form of light energy, receives the equivalent of 1000 watts, or 1.3 horsepower of light power. Over 24 hours, this averages out at just 250W/m². With 200m² of photovoltaic cells and a 12 % total efficiency of the propulsion chain, the plane’s motors achieve an average power of no more than 8 HP or 6kW – roughly the amount of power the Wright brothers had a available to them in 1903 when they made their first powered flight. And it is with that energy, optimized from the solar panel to the propeller, that Solar Impulse is striving to fly day and night without fuel!

This launch is a major milestone in its mission to make it around the world on just the power of the sun.  While we are still a couple years away from a global circumnavigation, the real set back according to the team is a lack of efficient battery technology.  Quite remarkable considering it’s already capable of remaining airborne for 36 hours at a time.

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Researchers at Purdue University have successfully implemented their ultrafast laser scribing technique for thin-film solar cells, a promising innovation that may bring down production costs and boost efficiency of photovoltaics.

Solar panels have long been flat and solid, limiting their placement and usage over the years. But thin-film solar cells are rapidly gaining ground in the market, as the flexible cells can be used as rooftop shingles and tiles, building facades, or glazing on skylights.

The problem with thin film so far has been manufacturing costs and efficiency, both of which are the direct result of the “microchannels” in solar cells. The microchannels, which interconnect solar panels with one another to generate usable amounts of electricity, have traditionally been created using a mechanical stylus – a slow process that often creates imperfect, inefficient cells.

“Production costs of solar cells have been greatly reduced by making them out of thin films instead of wafers, but it is difficult to create high-quality microchannels in these thin films,” said Yung Shin, mechanical engineering professor and director of Purdue University’s Center for Laser-Based Manufacturing. “The mechanical scribing methods in commercial use do not create high-quality, well-defined channels. Although laser scribing has been studied extensively, until now we haven’t been able to precisely control lasers to accurately create the microchannels to the exacting specifications required.”

But the team’s ultrashort pulse laser and its “cold ablation” process has overcome that boundary. The laser uses pulses that only last a quadrillionth of a second, creating precise microchannels very quickly without causing enough heat to damage the film.

“It creates very clean microchannels on the surface of each layer,” said Shin. “You can do this at very high speed, meters per second, which is not possible with a mechanical scribe. This is very tricky because the laser must be precisely controlled so that it penetrates only one layer of the thin film at a time, and the layers are extremely thin. You can do that with this kind of laser because you have a very precise control of the depth, to about 10 to 20 nanometers.

“The efficiency of solar cells depends largely on how accurate your scribing of microchannels is,” added Shin. “If they are made as accurately as possibly, efficiency goes up.”

Thin-film solar cells account for about 20 per cent of watts generated in the photovoltaic market globally, and are expected to account for 31 per cent by 2013. Though, that number may rise quickly once the pulse-laser technique is refined and commercialized over the course of their study.

Their work is being funded by a three-year $425,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.

[Daily Tech via Purdue]

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The company Neon Green has been around for some time now producing backpacks, their latest are a line of solar paneled backpacks that harness the energy from the sun allowing you to recharge your hand held devices the way nature intended.

Now, Neon Green is introducing a new line of bags ‘Soular Powers Back-Up Pack” that are functional, very colorful and trendy.  One item is the Piggy Back Back-Up Pack, it has a separate solar panel that will attach to any manufacturers backpack and will be available in a variety of fantastic colors to match your style. Neon Green makes the claim of 11.1 volts of charging capability when in full sunlight.

Other bags are the Centruian.  Also available in a variety of colors, it has multiple compartments and a separate laptop pouch with a nice solar panel on top. The Capsoul is a basic black backpack with a 3 in 1 bag that transforms into either a hand carry case or shoulder bag and includes a detachable solar panel.

They don’t have prices yet, but you can check out Neon Green’s product catalog in the meantime.

Neon Green Soular Backpacks: with Solar Panels Image Gallery

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