“Solar power becomes the king of electricity,” declares the International Energy Agency in its 2020 report. IEA experts predict that the world will generate 8-13 times more solar power in the next 20 years than it does today. New solar panel technologies will only accelerate the rise of the solar industry. So what are these innovations? Let’s take a look at the cutting-edge solar technologies that will shape our future.
1. Floating solar farms offer higher efficiency without taking up land
So-called floating photovoltaics are relatively old: The first floating solar farms appeared in the late 2000s. Since then, the building principle has been improved and now this new solar panel technology is enjoying great success – so far, mainly in Asian countries.
The main advantage of floating solar farms is that they can be installed on virtually any body of water. The cost of a floating PV panel is comparable to a similarly sized land-based installation. What’s more, the water beneath the PV modules cools them, thus bringing higher efficiency to the overall system and minimizing energy waste. Floating solar panels typically perform 5-10% better than terrestrial installations.
China, India and South Korea have large floating solar farms, but the largest one is now being built in Singapore. This really makes sense for this country: it has so little space that the government will take every opportunity to use its water resources.
Floatovoltaics is even starting to cause a stir in the United States. The U.S. Army launched a floating farm on Big Muddy Lake at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in June 2022. This 1.1 megawatt floating solar farm has 2 megawatt hours of capacity energy storage. These batteries will power Camp McCall during power outages.
2. BIPV solar technology makes buildings self-sustaining
In the future, we won’t be installing solar panels on rooftops to power buildings – they will be energy generators in their own right. Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) technology aims to use solar elements as building components that will become the electricity provider for the office or house of the future. In short, BIPV technology allows homeowners to save on electricity costs and subsequently on the cost of solar panel mounting systems.
However, this is not about replacing walls and windows with panels and creating “job boxes”. The solar elements have to blend in naturally and not interfere with the way people work and live. For example, photovoltaic glass looks like ordinary glass, but at the same time it collects all the energy from the sun.
Although BIPV technology dates back to the 1970s, it didn’t explode until recently: solar elements have become more accessible, more efficient and more widely available. Following the trend, some office building owners have begun integrating PV elements into their existing buildings. This is called building application PV. Constructing buildings with the most powerful BIPV solar panel systems has even become a competition among entrepreneurs. Obviously, the greener your business is, the better its image will be. It seems that Asia Clean Capital (ACC) has won the trophy with its 19MW installed capacity at a shipyard in eastern China.
3. Solar skins turn panels into advertising space
A solar skin is basically a wrapper around a solar panel that allows the module to maintain its efficiency and display anything on it. If you don’t like the look of solar panels on your roof or walls, this novel RV technology lets you hide the solar panels – just choose the right custom image, such as a roof tile or lawn.
The new technology is not only about aesthetics, it’s also about profits: businesses can turn their solar panel systems into advertising banners. Skins can be customized so that they display, for example, a company logo or a new product on the market. What’s more, solar skins give you the option to monitor the performance of your modules. The downside is the cost: for solar thin-film skins, you have to pay 10% more on top of the solar panel price. However, as solar skin technology develops further, the more we can expect the price to drop.
4. Solar fabric allows your T-shirt to charge your phone
Most of the latest solar innovations come from Asia. So it’s no surprise that Japanese engineers are responsible for developing solar fabrics. Now that we’ve integrated solar cells into buildings, why not do the same for fabrics? Solar fabric can be used to make clothes, tents, curtains: just like panels, it captures solar radiation and generates electricity from it.
The possibilities for using solar fabrics are endless. Solar filaments are woven into textiles, so you can easily fold and wrap them around anything. Imagine you have a smartphone case made of solar fabric. Then, simply lie on a table in the sun and your smartphone will be charged. In theory, you could simply wrap the roof of your home in solar fabric. This fabric will generate solar energy just like panels, but you won’t have to pay for installation. Of course, the power output of a standard solar panel on the roof is still higher than that of solar fabric.
5. Solar noise barriers turn the roar of the highway into green energy
Solar-powered noise barriers (PVNB) are already widely used in Europe and are starting to appear in the United States as well. The idea is simple: build noise barriers to protect people in towns and villages from highway traffic noise. They provide a large surface area, and to take advantage of it, engineers came up with the idea of adding a solar element to them. The first PVNB appeared in Switzerland in 1989, and now the freeway with the highest number of PVNBs is in Germany, where a record 18 barriers were installed in 2017. In the United States, construction of such barriers didn’t begin until a few years ago, but now we expect to see them in every state.
The cost-effectiveness of photovoltaic noise barriers is currently questionable, depending in large part on the type of solar element added, the price of electricity in the region and government incentives for renewable energy. The efficiency of photovoltaic modules is increasing while the price is decreasing. This is what is making solar-powered traffic noise barriers increasingly attractive.