Japanese machinery kirigami rotates the solar panels to the sun

Kirigami - machinery manufacture of paper figures and cards with scissors. This is a variation of the ancient Japanese art of origami. Who could imagine that the paper figures prompt the idea to make a solar cell panel, which track the sun without additional features? Engineers from the University of Michigan came up with a very simple design for this.

If you stretch a little flat sheet of plastic solar cells, it is divided into undulating ribbons, connected to each other in areas of bends. The slope of the cells depends on the tension. Very simple and effective.



Due to the rotation of the Sun-kirigami solar cells generate up to 40% more energy than conventional fixed solar cells.

"This design makes large solar panel modules solar tracking into the design, which is essentially flat," - says Aaron Lamoureux (Aaron Lamoureux), a doctoral student in materials science and engineering, one of the authors of scientific work, opublikovannoy in the journal «Nature Communications».

Kirigami main advantage is that when installed in private homes is not necessary to reinforce the roof, resulting in an expensive procedure. If you install the traditional equipment to track the sun and the rotation of the panels, it is necessary to carry out this reinforcement of the roof, said Lamoureux.

By experimenting with the technique kirigami engineers have tried various forms of panels, including quite complex. It turned out that the very simple construction and is very effective. A number of parallel slits allow tilting the solar panels by controlling the angle of rotation to within one degree.



A study funded by the National Science Foundation and NanoFlex Power Corporation. The University is now applied for a patent and started to search for partners for the commercialization of ideas.



Source: geektimes.ru/post/262672/