Friday, May 20, 2011

Solar Panels on Your What?

Ensol, a company in Norway teamed up with University of Leicester scientists to develop a revolutionary substance that may be able to turn your windows, mobile phone, or computer screen into a solar panel.

The material is made of nano-particles and can potentially be painted or sprayed onto a flat surface in order to transform that surface into a solar panel. Currently, application of the substance tints windows and other transparent or translucent surfaces slightly, but development is still underway.

Hopefully soon you’ll be able to do a whole lot more than just put a few solar panels on your home or office building. This breakthrough technology with hopefully someday allow us to turn entire buildings into solar energy catchers. And rather than using material like silicone, this new technology uses strings of nano-particles - much thinner that a human hair. This amazing substance is anticipated to be able to produce up to one hundred watts p/sqm.
Phil Denby, the technical manager at EnSol originally discovered the technology and decided to team up with the folks at the University of Leicester. Together, Mr. Denby and the talented scientists at U of L are now fine-tuning the production process and working on applications of the amazing material.

With the popularity of the Environmental movement, it is surely time that solar panels and the way we think about capturing the energy of the sun are updated. The possibilities of this exciting new technology could mean a huge decrease in our dependence on oil and natural gas. Perhaps some day we will even be able to generate enough energy on our own, from our own homes, to surpass our consumption.


Until this technology is available, there are a variety of ways you can cut down on your energy usage including constructing your own DIY solar panels at home! Constructing solar panels is a great DIY weekend project for you and your family and is probably much less expensive than you imagine.

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