Eco Factor: State of the art printer capable of producing flexible solar modules that can generate over a gigawatt per year.
Photovoltaic cells printed onto a flexible plastic surface? Reads more like a mad scientist’s dream, right? But it’s not, as Konarka Technologies has finally come up with the world’s largest Roll-to-Roll thin film solar manufacturing facility, which can produce enough flexible solar modules to produce a gigawatt of solar electricity per year.
The technology makes use of Dimatix’s inkjet heads that can print solar panels onto flexible plastic surface. The company hopes that this new facility will be capable of producing in excess of 10 million square miles of material per year, which will allow the company to develop solar chargers for everything from your iPod to your home.
The Dark Side:
The company will be making use of 10 million square miles of plastic based material to generate these solar panels. Definitely, the solar panels produced from this roll will make energy generation easy, but getting all that plastic material will surely won’t do much good for the environment.
Via: What They Think
