What are the advantages of flexible solar panels?įlexible solar panels are much lighter than convential solar panels, which makes them suitable for different applications. MIT - solar cells printed on paperMIT revealed exciting tests, such as printed solar cells on a layer of PET plastic, which was folded 1,000 times, and found it would still work.Unfortunately the efficiency is still very low with lab-tested efficiencies of around 1%. Researchers at the MIT have developed a technology to print solar cells on a variety of materials, including ordinary paper, cloth and other cheap materials.This technology will open a range of possibilities, such as printing solar cells on window shades.

Oxidative chemical vapor deposition process The general advantage of amorphous silicon thin film is that it generates power already through de-fractioned light, which means it generates power during the early morning and the evening.Besides these two technologies, that have been commercialized, there are other developments in flexible solar products. The two most common are: Copper Indium Gallium Selenide (CIGS) CIGS cells represents the next generation of thin film solar technology and can be deposited on plastic, metal foil and glass. Which technologies are used for flexible solar cells?Īt the moment there are different thin film technologies used for flexible pv panels. Flexible solar cell qualitiesĬrystalline cells are fragile and need glass as protection, while there are solar cell technologies, such as thin film cells, that are less breakable and can be encapsulated with a simple plastic and therefore can be flexible.

While crystalline solar cells are currently the mainstream technology and used in majority of solar panels, some companies choose to develop flexible solar panels.

Solarcell curtain