Imagining some upcoming solar power possibilities

Greetings from an outrageously busy month. I continue my work travel regimen, having recently visiting Indiana and heading to Minnesota this weekend. My Georgetown University intensive class is running this week, and I’m prepping my other class which starts in a few days (blog post on the way).

So this post will be fast:

One of the great signs of progress in our time has been the massive growth in solar power.  Prices have fallen, with solar becoming cheaper than fossil fuels, and deployment has soared.  Finally solar power is beginning to play a serious role in supplying humanity’s electrical needs.  We should expect more solar panels spreading wherever there’s light, if sometimes in the face of opposition.

Along these lines, I’ve been wondering what comes next. How far could solar go?  After all, there’s a great virtue in drawing power from the solar system’s generous center.

One possible development concerns even thinner and more flexible solar surfaces.  Beyond stiff panels, can we use something lighter, capable of installation throughout humanity’s built environment?  Sprayable solar research and development has been progressing for years, often relying on nanomaterials and/or perovskite.  Recently an Oxford University team described a very thin solar material: “At just over one micron thick, it is almost 150 times thinner than a silicon wafer. Unlike existing photovoltaics, generally applied to silicon panels, this can be applied to almost any surface.”  It involves tiny stacks of solar receptors, absorbing more light than single-layered systems do.

To almost any surface… this phrase caught my futurist’s eye. Imagine taking this Oxford tech or a similar material a few years forward to the point where it’s consumer grade.  You and I can purchase some in rolls or strips, which can be stuck onto most surfaces. Perhaps the next iteration is sprayable.  How might we use such stuff?

Let’s assume, for the sake of bloggery, that new solar gradually becomes cheaper, following most technological patterns, and also lighter and more flexible. Imagine that governments don’t regulate it out of existence and that some business models appear to bring the material to market. Let’s leave open how power storage might develop; I’ll return to that.

DALL-E imagines sprayable solar on vehicles

Let’s start with buildings.  I walked between the cities of Washington, DC and Rosslyn today, and imagined all kinds of rooftops covered in rolled-out solar surfaces.  Rooftops wouldn’t be the only carriers, as the sides of building present themselves to sun for hours each day, depending on season and weather, so I mentally rolled more solarstuff down their sides, right to the street.  Such a covering could generate operational power for lights, air conditioning/heat, elevators and escalators, and so on.  If a given building generates more electricity than it uses, it can save the surplus in on-site batteries or feed  it into a local or utility’s grid.

If we can make rollable or sprayable solar transparent, then we can paste it into windows. Imagine how much more power a glassy, gleaming office building could generate like this.  Or think of a greenhouse using its passive solar surfaces to actively power its water sprayers.

Other fixtures in the built environment could carry solar paint. Lampposts, for example, might become self powered without attached and extended panels, depending on their location and time of year.  Park benches, the sides of bridges, traffic signals, park benches, various utility boxes could hold or share power. Temporary structures could serve a similar function, if the material is light and durable enough.  For example, people and organizations might prop up solar-coated tents to power whatever is inside.  Imagine an outdoor wedding where the canopy powers food warmers and lights, plus guests’ phones.

As I walked into Rosslyn, thinking about this, I wondered about vehicles.  We could cover a car’s roof and sides, providing enough power to recharge an EV’s battery, or at least to add energy to it, and maybe some extra to power inhabitants’ devices.  Larger vehicles – trucks – might similarly power their own EV engines. I wonder if they’d be efficient enough to charge extra batteries which they could rent to people along the way, or to folks at their destination.  Could an 18-wheeler with its tall sides and elevated top become a net solar generator?

At a smaller scale I can imagine a bicyclist adding solar to his or her helmet and bike surfaces (such as side panels or panniers) to charge lights and perhaps portable devices.  Hikers could add solar to backpacks and hats, powering camping devices.  It depends on how efficient the solar gear is.

Maybe other types of vehicle would benefit. Could ships at sea cover decks, sides, and structures with rollable solar enough to power their engines and all systems? Perhaps large or efficient enough ships could, once they supplied their own needs, fill up batteries on long routes, carrying them, charged, for sale at destinations.  I also wonder how much solar aircraft could soak up with collectors on wings and fuselage.

This kind of light solar might be very useful for emergency services.  I mentioned tents before, and it’s easy to envision FEMA or the Red Cross/Crescent quickly setting up solar-enabled tents for disasters and refugees, along with similarly generating shacks and other temporary housing.

I wonder about the aesthetics of rollable or sprayable solar. Would the initially available color and texture irritate some people?  I can imagine competing products rapidly offering different appearances, competing on appearance.   Or would the difference be noteworthy, especially as the tech becomes widespread and accepted as a climate necessity? I can also see some people celebrating solar-less, pre-solar walls, roofs, and other surfaces.  Or what would it take for new solar surfaces to become desirable and chic?

There might be a public/private split on uses of such sprayable solar.  A private company, for example, could easily charge people for charging devices from their trucks or business centers, while a government building might prefer to make such services freely available (think of charging your laptop at a public library nowadays). Alternatively, a business could offer free trickles as a marketing tactic.  Also on the marketing side, we can expect pitches for goods with attached solar – buy our car/tent/condo and receive a solar power bonus!

I expect we’d see rapid developments in batteries as consumer goods, along with quick and easy transmission setups to connect solar sources to outlets.

Now, one way of describing a futurist’s job is that of forecasting cars.  It’s easy, goes the adage, to imagine cars.  What’s harder is to foresee traffic jams.  In other words, what are some ways this kind of solar could go wrong?

For one, there’s a supply issue.  Would the consumer product depend on scarce materials, triggering a brutal sourcing competition? Would churning out the materials clobber various parts of the global ecosystem?  Assuming research and develop continues, will successive waves of light solar build up an increasing pile of older models? In other words, we could see a boom in solar waste.

For another, given the recent generation of technology, we should expect some bad business practices. I can imagine companies trying to turn customers into solar farmers, perhaps by offering company-store-like plans to drivers, hikers, tenants, and workers. It would be easy for surveillance to ride in on solar surfaces, checking for one’s geolocation when soaking up solar (or not doing so), monitoring usage at micro-levels.  We can also see governments doing this as well.

I’m curious about business models and backlash. Given the lifecycle of products, would we have to peel off old solar rolls and replace them with new? Would this involve hiring specialized workers to do this cleanly? I could see misuse, like running a solar surface beyond its lifespan or people trying to sell used rolls which don’t work any longer.  Would solar refurbishment and update costs become part of the economics of a range of household expenditures?  Perhaps governments would issue policies to keep the cycle humming, like adding requirements to car inspections and home sales.

I can imagine resistance and dislike, such as a used clothing store refusing to accept chargeable clothes, or a used car purchaser wanting unclad vehicles. The same folks who today roll coal might proudly proclaim their, ah, naked surfaces.

Would this kind of solar encourage some people to use fossil fuels? That is, someone could drive a petroleum-burning car with a solar roof, reasoning that they’re doing their bit for climate adaptation. Airlines might hold back on using new fuels if they can claim to be generating electricity from solar wings.  A government might cite a wide solar rollout as meeting climate goals, using it to offset coal burning.

That’s all for now.  Time for me to get off the train and walk from Rosslyn to Georgetown for the start of class, imagining every other thing I see coated in solar.

PS: we could consider popularly used sprayable/rollable solar as an example of  the hypermodern ideology I’ve described.  It’s pro-growth, pro-science, driving more economic activity, relying on technological advancement.