A sunny outlook for the future of solar technology.
The solar market has currently hit a bit of a slump. High prices for customers, high manufacturing costs and all kinds of other factors are having a negative effect on a sustainable energy source, meaning countless amounts of us are missing out on the benefits of solar technology.
Not only is solar power great for saving on energy bills (we all know how high those are!) but the technology also generates a much greener, sustainable form of energy. Since it still isn’t very common to use solar panels as they are expensive pieces of kit, new forms of solar technology, known as MicroSolar, are being developed to create a more affordable form of energy.
Kickstarting a Solar Revolution
Chances are you’ve probably heard of the website Kickstarter.com. It’s basically a funding platform for unique projects that don’t want to rely on investor backing, offering incentives to public funders. Over the past year Kickstarter has grown massively and has been used for everything from funding a brand new games console to raising money to make albums.
It’s also home to a brand new project that’s set to potentially revolutionise the development of solar panels: The Solar Pocket Factory: an Invention Adventure.
This project, founded by avid inventors Shawn Frayne and Alex Hornstein, is built around creating a sustainable future for the solar panel industry. The basic principle behind the project is twofold: first, the two inventors want to make available an affordable DIY solar kit that allows anyone to easily create a solar charger, and they’re also developing the Solar Pocket Factory, an easy-to-use machine that automates solar panel production and keeps costs down.
As the two say on their Kickstarter brief: “We loved the possibilities that microsolar offered, and we kept asking ourselves, ‘Could we make it better’?"
Turns out they can. Both Shawn and Alex have developed several working prototypes that bring useful solar energy to solar appliances, all for a menial cost. It’s particularly great news for extremely poor countries where electricity isn’t readily available, as using these microsolar panels to generate power would allow the use of lights, electrical equipment and other items to improve the quality of life in poorer countries.
The devices are also said to be extremely affordable, in order to ensure that everyone gets a good deal and affordable, clean energy. They’ll even ship it anywhere in the world completely free of charge, showing their commitment to developing for the future.
But how does it all work? How is it that these fantastically tiny solar panels can generate loads of energy and still be cheap? It’s not some form of wizardry, but is innovation. Check out the table below to delve more into the process.
As can be seen, not only are the panels cheaper to actually produce, they’re also automated and last a significant amount of time longer than traditional solar panels. As they say on their Kickstarter, Alex and Shawn say:
“We found that about 50% of the cost of a microsolar panel is in the assembly: every part of the panel is made by hand, from breaking apart the silicon wafers into small pieces, to soldering them, gluing them onto a panel and covering them with plastic. We also found that many of these panels are flawed--about fifteen percent of the microsolar panels are rejected and thrown out because they were soldered imperfectly. Finally, the materials used are cut-rate, and will fail in a few years as UV from the sun breaks down the cheap plastic that coats the panels, even though the silicon cells trapped inside can easily work for twenty-five years. Looking at all these problems, we started coming up with solutions.”
One of these solutions is the development of the Solar Pocket Factory, a machine designed to produce the MicroSolar panels in a much more efficient way. This is the main reason why the two inventors have started up a Kickstarter funding project – they need the financial backing to develop their working Solar Pocket Factory prototype into a device that can be supplied worldwide or, if you prefer their version, “we need to scale up and get our panels out of our workshops and into people’s hands. And we want to that with Kickstarter, making this the first crowd-funder advance in clean technology.”
In addition to the pocket factory, the two inventors are also working on The Solar Pocket Kit, a handy device that allows a user, at home, to construct a solar-powered charger and other installations. The two inventors have even pasted a number of videos on Youtube outlining how to do this, such as the following clip:
It’s a great idea and one that could potentially revolutionize the production of solar power. Make sure you check out the official Kickstarter of the project, and contribute anything you can.
Written by Barry Atkins at www.tester.co.uk
