Electricity From Solar Power Paint!
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
Installing solar panels on the roof of every new building in the world would go a long way towards solving our energy needs, but as we all know, solar panels are costly and often difficult to install. But what if the solar panel was an integral part of every building? What if solar cells could be painted on building products? Well, according to a team from Swansea University this type of technology will soon be coming to a hardware store near you.
If that could be done it would have the potential to revolutionise the solar power industry. Isn’t it amazing that we can come up with such ingenious solutions to problems we face in these uncertain times? The human race has the knowledge, resources and ingenuity to overcome complex issues such as global warming. If only the politicians would realise this and pump some money into research and development. Just imagine if they put as much money into developing things like this as as they have into things like the Iraq war! Come on Gordon, wake up!
The Swansea Solar Paint project is led by Dave Worsley, who, together with his team, were researching ways to make make steel last longer. By chance that they started to focus on the degradation of paints in steel surfaces, when they realized that their research could lead them to develop a new way of getting energy from the sun.
Often it is these chance discoveries which lead to really useful innovations. Just imagine the surface area available in the average city which could be converted into electricity generating solar surfaces. I truly believe that with enough application we could evolve into a sustainable civilization as far as our energy consumption goes. In fact the logical conclusion to all of this is going to be the necessity to evolve into an energy neutral society. Has anybody claimed the buzzword ‘energy neutral’ yet or can I have it? 
The idea is to coat every piece of steel cladding with a solar cell paint. As steel is passed through the rollers multiple coatings of of the solar cell system are applied to it. Based on the preliminary research, the materials that are being applied are suited to capturing low level solar radiation, which means that they should work just as well in areas where the sun doesn’t directly shine on them.
This sounds like quite an expensive material but I suppose if enough people were to use it then the costs would come down, as with all these things. While resources are still being pumped into traditional forms of energy generation and unbelievably, nuclear power, it can be very difficult for these emerging technologies to grab a foothold in the market. Also, as more and more companies jump on the green bandwagon with motives that go no further than putting more dollars in the bank a culture of competition can be created amongst researchers with the end result being a slower advancement of these technologies. Different research teams effectively fight each other for the prize!
We must join forces to overcome the old ways!
