Flexible Solar Panels

Flexible solar panels are one of those green products that have a very small carbon footprint. Using the energy of the sun to provide power to your favorite small appliances with something very portable and lightweight – even to fit into your bag pack. The range of sizes available will fit your requirements.

Roll up or fold up your power generator and carry it in your bag or vehicle and use it at the next location sounds ideal. Thin film technology is being used to make panels of light-absorbing materials and applied to many different surfaces such as plastic, glass or ceramic. The panel is made up of photovoltaic cells and a converter.
The use of Cadmium tulleride and polymorphous silicon has proven to be cost effective with good features suitable for building solar panels. Personal use of flexible solar panels grows fast and is used for boats, recreational vehicles and other mobile applications. The price is going down as the users increase in a product that will become more common.

The adhesive backing and peel type is very flexible and can be attached to many different surfaces and then connected to appliances for power. These panels are used on steel roofs or roofs manufactured with shingles.
There are proof that rigid panels perform better than flexible panels in low light conditions but when flexibility is needed then the preferred product is not that obvious. When you need to power a house then the conventional solar power panels could be the more cost efficient product. Charging laptops, cell phones, cameras, AA and AAA batteries are the more known application of flexible solar panels at this stage of development.

Although the panels are flexible it has a minimum diameter to bend. To keep this bending diameter as small as possible the thickness of the photovoltaic layer should be kept as thin as possible. The 5, 10 and 20 watt range of solar panels are commonly available.

Before buying these panels make sure that the product is guaranteed to last for up to 25 years and that the power output do not drop off to below 80% after 20 years.

Research to produce more effective solar panels is ongoing and technology is available to manufacture panels with solar cells made from non-crystalline silicon with efficiencies of up to 50% higher. The thickness of the non-crystalline solar cells could be only 2 micrometers or 100 times thinner than the crystalline equivalent. The current efficiencies of 24% are high.

The uses of the flexible solar panel are very diverse and can be used to charge lithium batteries of your cell phone, laptop and global positioning systems. Then it could be build into bag pack flaps, tent sides, vehicle roofs, house roofs and any way where power is needed to charge small appliances.

The challenge to the scientists and developers is to improve the performance and life expectancy of the panels.