Le plastique - Entrée en matière

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Economic life becoming more sustainable

Apart from his wine and crops, one local farmer, Nicolas Machon, has decided to start harvesting the power of the sun with the installation of no less than 82 solar panels. For an investment of €97,000, his panels will generate more than 19,000 kw of sustainable electricity every year. He forecasts that over the 20 year time of his panels’ amortization, he will earn at least €222,000 from the electricity he will sell to EDF, the national electricity supplier.

Without forgetting his true vocation as a farmer, M.Machon is happy that his wish to be environmentally friendly means that some 180 tons of CO2* will be saved from the atmosphere – the equivalent of a car driving 13 million kilometres**.

* Average European CO2 production per kW is 0.476 kg/kWh
** On the basis of an average car emitting approximately 135g CO2 per km

 

What exactly is photovoltaic electricity?

It was the French physicist Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel who first discovered in 1839 that some natural materials, particularly silicon, produce electricity when exposed to sunlight.
This principle is key to the manufacture of photovoltaic cells that convert solar power into electricity. Silicon cells are quite fragile unless they are made of amorphous silicon. Then, they are much cheaper, due to their manufacturing process which consists of spraying material on to a plastic frame. Silicon cells have to be protected by a transparent and resistant cover and the first examples used glass, itself a fragile material.
Plastic has proven to be a much more resistant and therefore more appropriate material.  In future development it will be employed for more than protection: for the cells themselves.

Plastic – a key element in generating solar electricity

To be considered as a serious alternative to non-renewable energy sources, it is key that photovoltaic cells are widely available and cheap to manufacture and operate. 

Canadian researchers have now invented a process that makes them perform better by up to 30% - the hybrid organic cell made from plastic.

Photovoltaic cells of whatever kind are made from sandwiched layers of materials – each with a specific purpose. One layer absorbs the sunlight; one produces the electricity and one distributes the energy. 

So a fairly complex product can now be made but whose use is simplicity itself.

The Rising Sun takes technology forward

A group of Japanese researchers** have now invented a photovoltaic cell that is both transparent and flexible – the DSSC. It has an output of 6% - enough to charge a mobile phone, and that’s just the start!

Imagine a sheet of A4 paper, orange in colour, transparent and very flexible. Very thin, but made of three layers of plastic. The layer in the middle absorbs light and gives out electrons.  Made of a conductive polymer mixed with titanium oxide, it is covered in a photosensitive ink. This material is then enveloped by two layers of a transparent but conductive polymer that carries the electricity away.

Thanks to this invention, the uncharged mobile telephone could be a thing of the past. Flexible, compact and light, this is the essential item for long journeys, particularly the essential tool, no matter what the weather conditions.

 

**Toin University in Yokohama with Peccell Technologies, University born company, and Fujimori Kogyo, plastic films manufacturer