Scientists are turning to mother nature for inspiration on improved solar panel designs. The concept of copying what nature has had millenia to make is generally referred to as biomimicry and is gaining momentum as breakthroughs are leading to major improvements.
Take, for example, one of the principle concerns of the photovoltaic (PV) industry: the footprint. To harness enough energy using the sun’s rays, solar panels stretching for acres upon acres are required. In countries where land costs are at a premium, PV solutions may not make sense.
The Sunflower Solution
Enter the recent efforts by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to use biomimicry to provide a solution, as reported by Wired. Looking to the design of a sunflower, scientists arranged the panels in the same way sunflower seeds grow within the sunflower.
The spiral design, a variant of Fermat’s spiral, shows promise of dramatically improving the efficiency of the area used to collect solar energy. The results were around 20% less area with small improvements in conversion rates.
Augmenting Nature
Or take the new developments published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) regarding a process of bonding a synthetic chemical to naturally occurring photosynthesis chemicals. The process is being called a bionanodevice.
The enzyme Photosystem I is used by plants to produce hydrogen for food and by bonding their own concoction to Photosystem I the scientists were able to double efficiency of hydrogen production. The implication is that augmented photosynthesis may be the key to harnessing hydrogen for biofuels.
More importantly, these bionanodevice improvements may be combined with the Fermat’s spiral designs to get a double-whammy out of PV systems. Imagine being able to harness electricity and hydrogen out of the same locations.
Solar power is seeing striking improvements across many fronts from better efficiency to reduced costs of production. As biomimicry gives us more clues to improved processes, 2012 gives us the hope that PV may decrease our dependency on fossil fuels – or possibly eliminate the need for fossil fuels in years to come.
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