The Turanor PlanetSolar cruises past Tahiti
Solar technology has evolved beyond just your grandpa's big, bulky photovoltaic panels on the roof. Advances in flexible, hyper-efficient and nano-scale materials of late has made it possible for solar cells to begin popping up in all kinds of shapes and places you might not expect. Here's a quick rundown of some surprising spots where solar technology dwells – be sure to flip through the gallery to get a full grasp on the scale of the increasingly solar-powered landscape.
Solar panels are great, so long has you can find the real estate on which to place them. One Swiss company is taking a novel approach to this limitation by creating floating islands of solar panels on Lake Neuchâtel. Each of the three planned 25-m (82-ft) diameter islands will be home to 100 photovoltaic panels for the next 25 years, for research and development purposes.
Meanwhile, with costs of fuel always seeming to be on the rise, shipping companies and other seafaring concerns are increasingly looking for ways of harnessing the power of that intense sun constantly beating down on vessels. We first saw one of the most impressive uses of "solar sails" in Shanghai in 2010, and since then others have looked at ways of equipping ships with panels in rigid sails. Given emerging flexible cell technologies, the day might also not be that far off when all of a ship's surfaces, even sails, are covered in solar cells. In that spirit we find the TURANOR PlanetSolar yacht, which completed a voyage around the world last year using the power of the sun.
In case you missed it, 2013 was a record-setting year for solar-powered flight, led by the Solar Impulse team completing the longest sun-fueled flight on its journey across America this summer.
Source: Gizmag
