Paint Power  

Renewable Energy World reports that research to develop a solar power generating paint continue to progress in Wales - Solar Paint on Steel Could Generate Renewable Energy Soon.

In three years, buildings covered in steel sheets could be generating large amounts of solar electricity, thanks to a new photovoltaic paint that is being developed in a commercial partnership between UK university researchers and the steel industry.

A laboratory built to develop the new solar technology that replicates plant's photosynthesis is due to start work on October 30th in Shotton, North Wales.

"If the solar cell paint can be successfully brought to the market, it could spell big changes when it comes to the future production of electricity," said Steve Fisher, spokesperson of the Corus Group, the Anglo-Dutch steel manufacturing group that is believed to be pouring tens of millions of euros into the venture.

The photovoltaic paint is made up of a layer of dye and a layer of electrolytes and can be applied as a liquid paste. Altogether, the sheets of steel get four coats of solar paint — an undercoat, a layer of dye-sensitized solar cells, a layer of electrolyte or titanium dioxide as white paint pigment and, finally, a protective film.

The paste is applied to steel sheets when they are passed through the rollers during the manufacturing process. The four layers of the solar cell system are built up one after the other in rapid succession.

Light hits the dye-sensitized solar cells, exciting the molecules that act as a light absorber or sensitizer. The excited molecules release an electron into the nanocrystalline titanium dioxide layer, which acts as an electron collector and a circuit. The electrons finally move back into the dye, attracted by positively charged iodide particles in a liquid electrolyte.

The solar electricity that the area covered with paint generates is collected and provides power for whatever application it is connected to.

Corus Colours produces about 100 million square meters of steel sheets a year. If the company's entire output of steel is given a lick of solar paint, then these steel sheets together could have a capacity of as much as 9,000 gigawatts (GW) of electricity every year, assuming the solar cells attain a power conversion efficiency of about 11 percent.

Because the photovoltaic paint has none of the material limitations of conventional silicon-based solar cell, it could, at least in theory, provide terawatts of clean solar electricity at a low cost in the coming decades.

REW also reports to an IEA report on renewable energy, setting a slightly wishy-washy target for 2050 - Half of Global Electricity To Come From Renewables IEA Says.

Nearly 50% of global electricity supplies must come from renewable energy sources in order to cut CO2 emissions in half by 2050, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says in its latest study, “Deploying Renewables: Principles for Effective Policies.”

Meeting these very ambitious objectives to “minimize significant and irreversible climate change” will require unprecedented political commitment and effective policy design and implementation, the IEA said. The IEA is also urging governments to adopt effective policies based on five key design principles to accelerate the exploitation of the “large potential for renewable energy.”

One last article at REW is a basic summary of the state of play for Concentrating Solar Thermal Power - which will probably be the biggest contributor to our energy needs by 2050.