TECH TALK...

Solar device that won’t burn a hole in pocket
Washington: Using sheets of glass covered with organic dyes, scientists have devised an efficient and practical solar power device that they believe can help make this clean, renewable energy source more affordable.

Experts eager for energy sources that do not involve the burning of fossil fuels often point to the promise of solar energy — harnessing sunlight to make electricity. But solar power so far has proven costlier than standard energy sources.

Writing on Thursday in the journal Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers describe the development of a new type of “solar concentrator” that may provide a better way to extract energy from the sun.

They used glass sheets coated in organic dyes to concentrate light hitting the panes. The dyes absorbed the light, then emitted it into the glass, which carried the light to the edges of the pane much as fiber-optic cables transport light over distances, the researchers said.

At the edges of the glass are located small solar cells that then transform the light into electricity.

“It consists of just a piece of glass with a layer of paint on top of it,” MIT electrical engineering professor Marc Baldo, who led the research, said in a telephone interview.

“The idea is the light comes in and hits the paint. The paint then bounces the light out to the edges of the glass. All you need is the solar cells on the edges. So we think we can use this to reduce the cost of solar electricity,” added said.

MIT researcher Jonathan Mapel, who also worked on the study, said the hope is that the use of this sort of technology can help bring the cost of solar power closer to the cost of conventional fossil fuel power sources such as coal. “One of the challenges with solar (energy) in general is that it’s just too high in cost. And what you’d like to do is reduce the price of solar electricity,” Mapel said. REUTERS