An Australian Physicist has been leading the push to pioneer a new type of low-cost solar energy, which he believes could make signing up for energy accounts as straightforward as a mobile plan.
During May of last year, the professor from the University of Newcastle, Paul Dastoor used organic printed solar cells to power screens and displays at an exhibition in Melbourne - the cells themselves are less than one millimetre thick and can be held down with just double sided sticky tape, they are similar in texture to a potato chip packet and the most important is that to produce them, it can cost less than 10$ per square metre. Whilst Dastoor has been working on the technology for over a decade, he has finally begun a 200 square metre installation in Australia. This is the first commercial application in the country and perhaps the entire world.
The commercial installation was completed in a day by five employees, and a lab-size printer can produce hundreds of metres of the product in one day.
"The low cost and speed at which this technology can be deployed is exciting as we need to find solutions, and quickly, to reduce demand on base-load power – a renewed concern as we approach another summer here in Australia," he has said.
Whilst there are a few issues (the printed technology is not as efficient as the silicon-based one, it degrades much faster), the low production costs and installation makes it a fierce competitor for the more expensive counterpart.
