Solar Paint: What Is The Reality?

Solar paint promises cheap electricity with very little effort. There have been several claims of progress toward this kind of power generation over the past few years. In reality though solar paint remains firmly in the realm of possible future worlds. A regular feature of articles on this topic are comments such as "could have a great impact", "it is hoped that", "scientists predict" and so on. None of these materials are currently available to the public. Predicted conversion rates for these future solar cells is at best 5%, less than half the current efficiency of thin film solar panels.

Solar power paint must operate in the same manner as all other photovoltaic substances. This means it requires at least two layers. One layer absorbs the sun's energy and releases electrons into the electricity supply of, say, a house and a second layer to reabsorb the electrons once they have passed through the circuit. Here are some of the technological claims that have been made so far:

Carbon NanoTubes

Carbon comes in many forms, and two of the forms that are used in this version of paint on solar cells are carbon nanotubes and fullerines. Both these are allotropes of carbon. The basic idea is that the carbon allotropes capture electrons released by the plastic they are printed onto.

Claims of possible "print at home" solar panels have arisen around this potential technology, but this is not possible with current technology. Experimental units have been produced at great cost but the means to produce these cells on a commercial scale does not exist.

One company, Nanosolar, has produced a printable solar technology that uses nanoparticles that align when the dye is setting to create semiconductors. This technology has been patented and Nanosolar is now commercially producing panels based on this technique. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested in this and there is no reason to suspect that the technical details of this process will be made public any time soon.

Paint Onto Steel

The most recent claim for progress in this field has been from the British University of Swansea. Absolutely no technical details have been made available about this process so all we can do is imagine how great it would be if such a thing existed.

Many other claimed breakthroughs make no mention of the technology whatsoever. While such a concept as solar power paint would be marvelous, we must take claims of progress in this area with a grain of salt. It also follows that anyone claiming to sell such a product is more than likely to be selling a bogus product.

Ultra Thin Silicon Print

Recent research at the University of Illinois in the US has resulted in an ultra thin silicon solar cell. The cell is flexible due to its thinness and is similar in its performance to other solar cells. This has also been described as a printing type of process. While there are undoubtedly many applications that transparent flexible cells could be put to, there is no chance that solar cells requiring ultra thin silicon could ever be incorporated into a paint, home printer or anything other than a high tech production line.

Summary

While one or more of the above technologies may become commercially viable at some stage in the future, there are currently no readily available solar paints. Any claim from a vendor to be selling paint on solar cells must be treated with a very high degree of scepticism as it is almost certainly a scam.