Hey, I know the phd student who printed out these cells and set up the demonstration! It's part of the university's push for large scale organic solar demonstrations along with the smaller test cells.<p>From talking with him, the technology isn't really ready for prime time yet but it's getting pretty close. I think the key point is that efficiencies in small scale cells and larger scale manufacturing are still climbing (the same group has achieved greater than 5% in a cm^2 test cell iirc) and the printing is incredibly cheap and very amenable to fast scaling up.<p>It seems pretty obvious that you needed more efficiency for it to be a viable rooftop solution but the guy who set this up claimed that the fact he could just stick down some velcro and stick on the cells opened up some different use cases with cheap and lean installations supporting cheap cells.<p>All in all, if you look at how far the technology has come in the last 5 years alone, then it's a pretty exciting field to follow.
Looks like the conversion efficiency is between 2% and 3%<i>, so, pretty low compared to silicon based PV<p>reference<p><a href="https://cleantechnica.com/2017/05/17/researchers-australias-university-newcastle-testing-printed-solar-panels/" rel="nofollow">https://cleantechnica.com/2017/05/17/researchers-australias-...</a><p><a href="http://reneweconomy.com.au/uni-newcastle-team-tests-printed-solar-panels-in-australian-first-50301/" rel="nofollow">http://reneweconomy.com.au/uni-newcastle-team-tests-printed-...</a><p></i> edited to clarify 2/3%
For a <i>very</i> rough comparison, according to this, conventional solar panels cost about $10-$12 per square foot, or very roughly $100 per square meter.<p><a href="https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-cost-per-Sq-ft-for-solar-panels" rel="nofollow">https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-cost-per-Sq-ft-for-solar-p...</a><p>Of course, what we really want is a comparison in terms of cost per watt.<p>Maybe equally important to the cost of these panels is the ease and cost of <i>installing</i> them. These new printed panels are very flexible/lightweight and can be deployed easily and even temporarily.
Does anyone have any information on how efficient these are how long they last and that kind of thing? All I got for the article was a lot of hype and $10 a meter.
I'm a researcher in this field. Printable, flexible solar cells have been researched for over a decade and improvements on their efficiency plateaued at about 10% almost five years ago. That's at lab scale being tested in a nitrogen glove box, using the most exotic designer molecules and printing techniques that don't scale. Many companies have tried and failed to commercialize this technology in the recent past, Konarka being one example. I believe Heliatek in Germany is the latest iteration, no doubt propped up by their massive solar subsidies.<p>The main problem is that the raw organic semiconducting materials are currently not produced at scale, and no chemical company will risk ramping production when the end product is only a 5% efficient cell that will be outcompeted by c-Si in almost every application except niche cases like the chicken coops described by others here.<p>That being said, my best guess is that printable, flexible electronics will be seen in flexible displays/wearables within 5 years, RFID tags on product packaging in the same time frame, biomedical and soft robotics applications within 10, and flexible large-area lighting (think wallpaper with programmable lighting zones) within 10 as well.<p>But in the energy game, efficiency and raw material costs determine winners, and printed OPV is losing on both.
> On our lab-scale printer we can easily produce hundreds of metres of material per day, on a commercial-scale printer this would increase to kilometres. If you had just ten of these printers operating around the clock we could print enough material to deliver power to 1000 homes per day,” said Professor Dastoor.<p>That being said, may-be 10Km worth of these can power 1000 homes.<p>It costs $10 per sq.meter.
2% efficiency would give you ballpark 5W per square meter (peak) or about .25W for a sheet of paper (less indoors or at night)<p>So, if this can be combined with a paper-thin e-ink display (and, if needed, a flat sheet capacitor for power storage), would that be enough to make true paper-thin displays at reasonable price?
I wonder if these could be used to produce panels on a remote planet/planetoid. I.e. could you use this to create a bunch of panels to place on the moon, even with the low efficiency you'd still save a lot by not having to ship them.
An interesting addition to the mix. The design space around solar power systems focuses on either cost (like in this example where efficiency is low) or efficiency gains regardless of cost[1].<p>Presumably if we get to a point where you can cheaply print 25+% efficient cells then we're "done" as it were on improving solar cells :-)<p>[1] <a href="https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/japanese-company-develops-a-solar-cell-with-record-breaking-26-efficiency/" rel="nofollow">https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/japanese-company-dev...</a>
> “By reinventing the delivery model we remove the need for initial lump sum outlays, overcoming the key barrier to community uptake and ensuring that the science actually ends up on our rooftops,” said Professor Dastoor.<p>But can't banks just solve this, by financing panels upfront? There's quite some money to be made there, I'd guess. And the risk is limited.
If the efficiency could just increase (to ~8% maybe) and inverters got a bit cheaper still, I think you'll start to really open the "just for fun" part of the market. I wouldn't hesitate to put them on my shed.
> If you had just ten of these printers operating around the clock we could print enough material to deliver power to 1000 homes per day,” said Professor Dastoor.<p>The US has 100M homes. That would require 100,000 days, or 300 years...