• Home
  • About
  • Contact us
Tech News, Magazine & Review WordPress Theme 2017
  • Computing
  • Entertainment
  • Gaming
  • Mobile
  • Science
  • Security
  • Services
  • Software
  • Space
No Result
View All Result
  • Computing
  • Entertainment
  • Gaming
  • Mobile
  • Science
  • Security
  • Services
  • Software
  • Space
Technovanguard — Be at the forefront of technology news
No Result
View All Result

Coating keeps snow and ice from piling up on solar panels

Justin Rowell by Justin Rowell
29.09.2022
Home Science

A person uses a scraper to clear snow off solar panels

Researchers have demonstrated an inexpensive, clear coating that reduced snow and ice accumulation on solar panels, enabling them to generate up to 85% more energy in early testing.

The advance could dramatically improve the productivity of solar panels in cold climates, the researchers report.

“Solar panels might lose 80 or 90% of their generating capacity in the winter.”

The coating is made chiefly of PVC or PDMS plastic and silicon or vegetable-based oils. It can be sprayed or brushed on in cold weather and, in its current iteration, can keep shedding snow and ice for up to a year.

“Renewable energy is really taking off right now, but snow is a huge problem in northern climates,” says Anish Tuteja, professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Michigan.

“Solar panels might lose 80 or 90% of their generating capacity in the winter. So figuring out a way for them to continue generating energy throughout the year was an exciting challenge,” he says.

While Tuteja’s lab has developed a number of effective ice-shedding coatings in the past, he explains that designing a coating that can passively shed both snow and ice represents a special challenge.

“Ice is relatively dense and heavy, and our previous coatings used its own weight against it,” Tuteja says. “But snow can be 10 times less dense than ice, so we weren’t at all certain that the tricks we use on ice would translate to snow.”

To find the right coating, Tuteja and his team turned to two key properties that have powered ice-shedding coatings in the past: low interfacial toughness and low adhesion strength. Low surface adhesion is basically slipperiness. Slipperiness alone works well on small areas, but the bigger the surface, the more force is needed to slide snow and ice off it. For larger areas, you need a way to break up the adhesion entirely. This is what low interfacial toughness does—it creates cracks between the ice and the panel. These propagate along the panel, regardless of its size, breaking the ice and snow free.

The team worked to strike precisely the right balance of low surface adhesion and low interfacial toughness that would repel both ice and snow from small and large surfaces alike. They started with very rigid PVC plastic, for low interfacial toughness, and mixed in a small amount of vegetable oil that gave the PVC a low enough surface adhesion to provide the best of both worlds. They also devised a second material that works equally well using PDMS plastic and silicon-based oil.

The researchers tested the material on a solar field in Fairbanks, Alaska, applying the coatings to a subset of panels that were monitored by automated cameras for a period of about two weeks. The tests showed that the coated panels had an average snow and ice coverage of approximately 28% over an entire winter season, in comparison to about 59% for the uncoated panels.

“As the cost of solar energy has dropped and profitability has climbed, much of the growth in solar energy in recent years has been in northern states, where snow is common,” says Laurie Burnham of Sandia National Laboratories, the project’s principal investigator.

“Snow-phobic coatings, if we can demonstrate their long-term efficacy, will make solar power more reliable and more affordable in snowy regions, helping accelerate our nation’s transition to a more solar-dominated energy economy.”

Tuteja says that, while the current iteration of the coating could be used immediately, the team plans to tweak it further with the aim of developing a coating that can last at least five years.

The study appears in Advanced Materials Technologies. Additional researchers are from the University of Michigan, the Alaska Center for Energy and Power at the University of Alaska, and the Photovoltaics and Materials Technology Department of Sandia National Laboratories.

Funding for the work came from the Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Office.

Source: University of Michigan

The post Coating keeps snow and ice from piling up on solar panels appeared first on Technovanguard.


Next Post
Genshin Impact update 2.4 goes underwater next week

Genshin Impact update 2.4 goes underwater next week

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recommended.

Best webcams from 1080p to 4K for 2021

Best webcams from 1080p to 4K for 2021

29.09.2022
Elon Musk Says First Orbital Launch of Starship Could Happen by January

Elon Musk Says First Orbital Launch of Starship Could Happen by January

29.09.2022

Trending.

Travel Business and Content Marketing: A Match Made in Heaven

Travel Business and Content Marketing: A Match Made in Heaven

07.02.2023
Netflix’s vampire movie Day Shift adds real bite to a classic action throwback

Netflix’s vampire movie Day Shift adds real bite to a classic action throwback

06.01.2023
Staying Ahead of the Game: The Top 10 Most Popular Websites for IT and Modern Technology

Staying Ahead of the Game: The Top 10 Most Popular Websites for IT and Modern Technology

30.01.2023
The Role of Technology in Transforming Healthcare Advertising

The Role of Technology in Transforming Healthcare Advertising

03.01.2023
How did Earth go From Molten Hellscape to Habitable Planet?

How did Earth go From Molten Hellscape to Habitable Planet?

29.09.2022
Technovanguard — Be at the forefront of technology news

Technovanguard - The latest news from the world of IT and modern technologies.

Categories

  • Computing
  • Entertainment
  • Gaming
  • Internet
  • Mobile
  • Science
  • Security
  • Services
  • Software
  • Space
  • Без рубрики

Tags

best bitcoin casino best bitcoin gambling site best crypto casino bitcoin gambling site btc casino FEATUREDNEWS linkedin connection message linkedin connection request template linkedin connect message examples linkedin networking message template linkedin sales message top bitcoin casinos

Recent News

Talents on AI: Kyiv to Host Three-Day Hackathon Connecting Developers and Sponsors in May 2023

Talents on AI: Kyiv to Host Three-Day Hackathon Connecting Developers and Sponsors in May 2023

07.03.2023
Ukrainian NFT Collection Honors Heroes and Raises Funds for Naval Combat Drones

Ukrainian NFT Collection Honors Heroes and Raises Funds for Naval Combat Drones

17.02.2023
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact us

© 2021 technovanguard.com. Submit news release

No Result
View All Result
  • Computing
  • Entertainment
  • Gaming
  • Mobile
  • Science
  • Security
  • Services
  • Software
  • Space

© 2021 technovanguard.com. Submit news release