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One of the most exciting next-generation solar companies is Konarka, a spinoff from Umass Lowell which makes solar power from organic polymers that is printed on a roll, just like photographic film. But, until recently, Konarka had more of a concept than a product ready for mass manufacture. Well, the company now has 1 GW / yr manufacturing capacity after taking over a former Polaroid facility and re-tooling it to produce solar panels. 

What does this mean? Well, if Konarka has its way, your roof won’t be the only thing generating electricity - your building’s awnings, blinds, and windows will too… 

While other companies like Nanosolar, Miasole, and SoloPower are also producing PV on a roll-to-roll manufacturing process, they employ the typical thin-film CIGS techngology.  A brief primer may be in order. Conventional photovoltaic panels rely on crystalline polysilicon wafers to generate the photovoltaic effect in which light is converted into direct current electricity. The panels are delicate and both expensive and difficult to manufacture. Thin film designs, by contrast, utilize thin layers of  photovoltaic material deposited onto a glass or flexibile substrate such as plastic or foil. Most thin-film designs utilize cadmium telluride (CdTe) or copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) as the semiconducting material, but some designs also use amorphous silicon (a-Si).

Konarka’s organic PV technology is different, and has the potentially to drive the cost of solar down much further. Made using flexible polymer photovolatic materials, Konarka’s PowerPlastic is more flexible and lightweight than traditional solar designs, allowing for a variety of form factors - as the name implies, it’s essentially a roll of plastic that can make electricity!

But PowerPlastic is just one of the exciting products we may see from Konarka in the coming years – believe it or not the company is working on integrating photovoltaic material into fabric, PowerFiber – imagine store awnings, and even blinds, producing electricity as they simultaneously provide shade! Questions remain: PowerPlastic isn’t remotely as efficient as flat-plate polysilicon PV (only about 3%, compared to 10-15%), so the cost per watt will have to be dramatically cheaper (Traditional PV currently costs about $2.40 / watt - Konarka’s technology currently costs about $1/watt, but the company believes it can be reduced to only 10 cents / watt with large scale manufacturing). Even if the price can be reduced, with such low efficiencies far more roof space would be required than traditional designs - and roof space is often in short supply. 

But the company’s ideas go beyond just PowerPlastic and PowerFiber. Because their technology can be made transparent, building-integrated photovolatics could take on a whole new meeting, and electricity-producing windows could be a reality. Konarka’s plans for such designs are even more novel than they initially sound –the company is currently research transparent, bi-facial solar cells that allow light to reach the photovoltaic material from both sides. As Konarka writes on their website, “Imagine a glass office building completely covered with material that produces power using both indoor and outdoor light, while allowing occupants to look through it: providing both shading and electricity generation.” Conceptually, the result could be for light what CHP is for waste heat – light powered by the energy produced from the solar system could then be recycled and used to generate additional electricity…

The company has a lot to prove – their first devices are small, portable chargers, not massive rolls of PowerPlastic designed to cover a roof. Let’s hope Konarka can make these potential PV applications a reality.

[Konarka]