Printing Solar panels in back yard.

TDSolarguy

Hello All
A friend of mine sent me this. Very interesting.
http://sciencefriday.com/

TDSolar Guy

rollandelliott

Re: Printing Solar panels in back yard.

What's really amazing is that they got $70K for developing that machine off of kickstarter.

I do not see the point of breaking a big solar cell and then tabbing it together ? why not just use the big cell?
Are they just trying to get a higher voltage in a smaller space? at the cost of lower current?

Anyways I can't think of a single practical use for the little solar cells. The garden lamps are so dim and the cell phone chargers are so slow that most people do not want to use them.

Maybe in a 3rd world country they would get more usage.

inetdog

Re: Printing Solar panels in back yard.

rollandelliott wrote: »

I do not see the point of breaking a big solar cell and then tabbing it together ? why not just use the big cell?
Are they just trying to get a higher voltage in a smaller space? at the cost of lower current?
Maybe in a 3rd world country they would get more usage.

Yes to both points. One-half volt is not good for much of anything in terms of electronics. It is economical to produce the cell wafers in the first place at a larger size, and then by breaking them into pieces you can increase the yield if small parts of the wafer turn out bad. There is no good technology at this time to grow a series string of cells on one wafer.
And the target is third world countries with small manufactories.

rollandelliott

Re: Printing Solar panels in back yard.

correct me if I am wrong, but isn't this why most of these types of solar applications use thin film in the first place? Yeah it takes twice as much surface area, but there's much less labor. Sorry just don't see why people invested $70,000 in these guys to make what is esentially a mini automated tabbing machine.