Charles Thurston, Contributing Editor03.30.10
Britain's P2i, in partnership with Savannah, GA-based Energy Launch LLC, will be testing its new plasma-bonded nano-coating on solar panels and other solar elements with solar industry manufacturers over the next two quarters prior to industry launch.
The durable coating renders a surface like panel glass to be not merely liquid-repellent, but rather "non-wettable," which means that dirt and other materials do not adhere, according to Ross Harding, managing partner of the venture fund. In normal solar panel arrays, dirt tends to reduce the efficiency of a panel by three to five percent, which then requires manual cleaning, he said. The routine cleaning of solar panels has become a cottage industry in solar markets like California.
In colder climates, frost can be a problem for solar systems, but the new coatings product reduces frost formation, since water beads up and rolls off the glass surface-especially inclined panels.
Should one or more solar panels become more completely occluded, by a flock of Canadian geese, for example, the energy loss to the chain can be much higher, in the double-digit percentage range, and requir
The durable coating renders a surface like panel glass to be not merely liquid-repellent, but rather "non-wettable," which means that dirt and other materials do not adhere, according to Ross Harding, managing partner of the venture fund. In normal solar panel arrays, dirt tends to reduce the efficiency of a panel by three to five percent, which then requires manual cleaning, he said. The routine cleaning of solar panels has become a cottage industry in solar markets like California.
In colder climates, frost can be a problem for solar systems, but the new coatings product reduces frost formation, since water beads up and rolls off the glass surface-especially inclined panels.
Should one or more solar panels become more completely occluded, by a flock of Canadian geese, for example, the energy loss to the chain can be much higher, in the double-digit percentage range, and requir
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