The biggest issue with solar panels is space. It takes over your roof's beautiful aesthetic and takes up plenty of space on it to collect more solar energy. Otherwise, it will occupy the yard (or backyard, depending on where the sun rises) to collect more energy to power your home.
Many homeowners appreciate the energy-generating capabilities of solar panels nowadays. The 25% efficiency across the board makes it an easy investment to have for anyone planning to use it. However, it does take up so much space that some are deterred to not have it. Even homeowners associations aren't keen on using solar panels for this purpose.
Alternatives for traditional solar panels do exist. One of them is GAF's solar shingles. The Timberline Solar Shingle from GAF is a groundbreaking technology that combines solar energy technologies with asphalt shingles. The simplified installation process makes it much more palatable than Tesla's complicated system that concentrates on technical capabilities but without much support and aftersales services.
If GAF's solar shingles get better and Tesla's set becomes much more accessible and usable for most homeowners, solar panels might be a thing of the past soon. Other new materials, such as transition metal dichalcogenides or TMDs might also take up less space if you prefer the traditional solar panel look. Learn more about it below from Stanford's Academic Journal.
Chief among the benefits of these transition metal dichalcogenides – or TMDs – is that they absorb ultrahigh levels of the sunlight that strikes their surface compared to other solar materials.
“Imagine an autonomous drone that powers itself with a solar array atop its wing that is 15 times thinner than a piece of paper,” said Koosha Nassiri Nazif, a doctoral scholar in electrical engineering at Stanford and co-lead author of a study published in the Dec. 9 edition of Nature Communications. “That is the promise of TMDs.”
The search for new materials is necessary because the reigning king of solar materials, silicon, is much too heavy, bulky and rigid for applications where flexibility, lightweight and high power are preeminent, such as wearable devices and sensors or aerospace and electric vehicles.
“Silicon makes up 95 percent of the solar market today, but it’s far from perfect. We need new materials that are light, bendable and, frankly, more eco-friendly,” said Krishna Saraswat, a professor of electrical engineering and senior author of the paper.
Here's a short video if you're curious about silicon's solar panel application.
A competitive alternative
While TMDs hold great promise, research experiments to date have struggled to turn more than 2 percent of the sunlight they absorb into electricity. For silicon solar panels, that number is closing in on 30 percent. To be used widely, TMDs will have to close that gap.
The new Stanford prototype achieves 5.1 percent power conversion efficiency, but the authors project they could practically reach 27 percent efficiency upon optical and electrical optimizations. That figure would be on par with the best solar panels on the market today, silicon included.
Moreover, the prototype realized a 100-times greater power-to-weight ratio of any TMDs yet developed. That ratio is important for mobile applications, like drones, electric vehicles and the ability to charge expeditionary equipment on the move. When looking at the specific power – a measure of electrical power output per unit weight of the solar cell – the prototype produced 4.4 watts per gram, a figure competitive with other current-day thin-film solar cells, including other experimental prototypes.
“We think we can increase this crucial ratio another ten times through optimization,” Saraswat said, adding that they estimate the practical limit of their TMD cells to be a remarkable 46 watts per gram.
Additional advantages
Their biggest benefit, however, is their remarkable thinness, which not only minimizes the material usage and cost but also makes TMD solar cells lightweight and flexible and capable of being molded to irregular shapes – a car roof, an airplane wing or the human body. (Continue reading here to learn more about the future of solar panel tech)
That being said, you can count on Roper Roofing & Solar to install your solar shingles or solar panels. We're a GAF Timberline Solar Shingle-certified installation team who can do the job right and give you an energy-independent home. Call us today to learn more about what we can do for you.
