I touched on industrial solar lights in the Hybrid Solar Lighting Technology article, but I would like to go into a bit more detail about some of the uses of solar lights in commercial application and some of the companies that are on the cutting edge of solar technology.
There are a number of companies that are leading the way for commercial solar lighting. One of those companies is Solar Cynergy. “Solar Cynergy manufactures high end architectural solar LED lighting for homes, developments and cities” as well as “an OEM line of Solar Photovoltaic Panels.” They are primarily a manufacturer and have distributors nation wide. Their product line is pretty unique in that they specialize in “solar inground lighting”. Their solar lights have been used in the Las Vegas Panorama Towers Luxury Condominium Project, the Granite Gables development project in Dallas, TX , and at the San Francisco Airport Hilton, to name just a few. I suggest visiting their website and blog to see all of the unique ways they use solar lighting technology.
Another company that specializes in industrial solar lights is clean-energies.org. They offer complete, tun-key solutions for solar lighting. They are mostly pole-mounted lights that come with everything except the pole. You can choose to supply the pole yourself, or have them quote you a separate price for the pole. These units can be used for: street lighting, area lighting, dock lights, lighting billboards, park lighting, parking lot lighting, walkway lighting, transit lighting, security lighting, etc.
If you are looking for a company that manufactures and sells a wide variety of commercial solar lights, solar flood lights and solar spot lights, you could do worse than taking a look at Clean Energies Store. These guys are international and widely respected. Take a look at their site. It’s a big site with lots of info.
LED Solar Street Lights
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As these companies are providing us with the opportunity to use solar power for more and more applications, researchers are working harder than ever to further solar technology to be cheaper to manufacture and be more efficient. At the University of Washington, a team of experts headed by David Ginger has been experimenting with manufacturing solar cells out of organic plastic polymers. Paul Berger and his team of researchers has found that adding silver nanoparticles to the polymers allows for an almost 12% increase in their efficiency.
Meanwhile at the University of Texas, Brian Korgel and his team are working on a Solar Ink, that can be basically painted onto buildings. Innovalight, a company out of Sunnyvale, CA. is using silicon ink patterned on top of silicon wafers to boost the efficiency of solar cells. While most researches are aiming for a goal of 10% efficiency out of their solar cells, Innovalight boasts an efficiency rating of 18%!
As you can see, we have come a long way with solar technology in a relatively short period of time. Entire homes and businesses are being solar powered and solar lights are everywhere. It will not be long before we will no longer be dependent on fossil fuels for our home and business energy needs.
Have you read about the copper based cells they are working on? I read it once in an article recently but can’t remember where, who, or even when I read about it. What I do remember is that the copper compound (they doped something with it I think), instead of silicon resulted in them being able to harvest a huge amount more of the sun’s spectrum than conventional cells do now and at a fraction of the cost per cell to make.
From the description of David Ginger’s work I’m wondering if that is what you’re referring to. Any idea if that’s the same thing? Are they using copper too, in the plastic polymers?
Curious,
Energy4Power.
Hello, Larry. Innovalight is experimenting with copper indium gallium selenide in their solar inks. They have been working with silicon inks for solar since 2002. They don’t mention the copper on their site, but I have found a couple of news stories around the net. They are about 10 minutes away from me. Maybe I’ll pay them a visit and ask them what’s up with the copper. 🙂
David Ginger was working strictly with the carbon based polymers and the effect of the heat on the bubbles and gaps in the plastics.
Steve