Inflatable Solar Power

Kovvy
solar_skin.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don't want to do costly and time-consuming renovations to your house in order to reap the benefits of solar power? Soon, you might not have to! These inflatable solar panels will zip together to provide easy solar power to pretty much any building.

Made from lightweight inflatable polymers and high-density foam tubing, these eye-shaped panels can be zipped together and wrapped around the surfaces of buildings--or used to create temporary free-standing, off-the-grid structures. 

This "Solar Skin" will be appearing in a new book titled Design Ecologies, edited by Lisa Tilder and Beth Blostein and published by Princeton Architectural Press.

 

Illustration by Studio Formwork.

Comments

Tre Cool

Submitted by masonic43 on Thu, 09/10/2009 - 16:02.

But will we see them at the local solar store? I hope, I hope, I hope...

www.flickr.com/photos/21366765@N03

Light bulb bans

Submitted by Candem Y on Thu, 09/10/2009 - 21:50.
That’s amazing! Could it be a good alternative to save energy aside from banning light bulbs? Anyway, people panic as the light bulb ban is went into effect in some areas of America. Despite the recent push to go green, the media are uncertain of the EU's decision to ban selling incandescent light bulbs and promote compact fluorescent bulbs. These light bulb bans might have some people running for lenders just to keep the lights on. The U.S. and Canada are expected follow. CFL bulbs put out the same light with 80% less energy, but are trickier to dispose of (they contain mercury) and are more expensive to manufacture. Your average CFL bulb goes for about $15, and the average LED bulb is about $100.

As to your original

Submitted by seachanged on Sat, 09/12/2009 - 12:12.

As to your original question, are these inflatable structural photovoltaics a good alternative to banning light bulbs, the answer is they are not. Their photovoltaic function is subordinate, or at least on par, with their structural function. They are a solution to a problem that is different from the banning of inefficient lighting technologies that harm the public good (namely, the problem they solve is "how to win a design competition"). The solar skin stuff will not be manufactured, as it cannot compete on a cost basis.

Compact fluorescent bulbs go for about 2 bucks apiece, in 6 packs, not 15 dollars apiece. That's what they were going for about ten years ago.

They do contain mercury (because that's how they work), but so does the coal that is burned to light your tungsten bulbs. I've done the calculation myself, and seen it repeated elsewhere, but using compact fluorescents for all of your lighting uses about as much mercury as is released by all the coal you would have to burn if you were using tungsten bulbs.

Of course, you can recycle the compact fluorescent bulbs, and extract all the mercury, but the coal plants contaminate huge swaths of land (basically, the entire country). For example, almost all of the river networks are contaminated with enough mercury that it shows up in all the fish caught in them in the US.

There is at least one other advantage. I've done this calculation: if all the households in California were to use compact fluorescents for their lighting needs, the amount of energy saved is equivalent to the energy that was produced by the reactor that melted down at Three Mile Island. 

LED bulbs are not yet competitive with compact fluorescents, both in terms of efficiency and in price, but they will be, and they'll last five times longer than compact fluorescents.

I'll do some arithmetic for you: a 100 watt light bulb is about fifty cents, and lasts about a thousand hours. A 23 watt compact fluorescent is about 3 bucks, and lasts 10,000 hours, so you're throwing your money away, Mr. Tungsten, even before you factor in the savings on your electric bill.

Currently, there are no 100 watt equivalent LED bulbs that I know of, but in the spirit of this analysis, it would last 5 times longer than the compact fluorescent, and would have to cost less than 15 dollars to compete with it (assuming that it is as energy efficient as a compact fluorescent).

 

 

 

LED Flood units

Submitted by Leon Night on Fri, 09/11/2009 - 06:57.

Just yesterday I saw large I/O LED Flood's: $19.99 (5 Watts) and smaller recessed lighting type mid-sized LED flood's: $15.99 @ Costco. Priced right where CFL's were not too long ago. 

 

Re:

Submitted by steveaustin on Thu, 11/04/2010 - 01:22.
Solar panels were being used for quite a number of years now. You use to have to buy the panels from some special manufacturer and as a result, they were very costly and most people could not afford to purchase one.LED Bulbs

I've always trusted the

Submitted by Anna Keighley on Tue, 03/29/2011 - 12:28.
I've always trusted the solar panels. The thing is that even though they can cost more than an average source of electricity, you get your money back in time. I've placed one in my summer kitchen, along with some face lifters to really add something nice to it.