Get Power From Your Curtains

Just imagine what it would be like if every time you shut your curtains, you could capture enough sunpower to run your laptop or television.  Such technology exists, but no one has put it together in an easy-to-use package that you can buy at your local store.

Sheila Kennedy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) believes that solar textiles can create a revolution in the way we collect and use electricity.  She is an architect and professor at MIT and has given much thought to power and light becoming flexible, literally.  Her name for it is "soft power", which comes from the "soft energy path" coined by Amory Lovins in the 1970s to describe renewable energies that would gradually replace centralized grids.

Joseph Nye also used the term to conceptualize the ability of values, culture and persuasion to influence change.  Kennedy's work builds on these ideas.  For her, "soft power" means the function of flexible materials to turn sunlight into electricity.

The soft power approach will allow incredibly sensual, beautiful and compelling spaces and products that can harvest energy.  Her firm has been designing products based on thin-film photovotaics that move and look like fabric, but act as solar panels.  These materials can be found in nature or created in the labratory and produce energy when they absorb light.  They are very flexible and efficient.

Part of the plan is to match thin-film photovoltaics with semi-conducting materials such as LEDs.  These two materials are complementary.  One takes sunlight and creates electric, the other takes electric and creates light.  Batteries can be built into the material to store energy that can be used later or transfered to a larger battery.

Economies of scale will contribute to the value of this material, as it has the potential to be made in large volumes with a low carbon footprint.  They can be manufactured similarly to newsprint, roll to roll.  That makes it potentially very affordable.  Although its currently less efficient than glass technology, Kennedy feels that's going to change.  Currently, there is research into making the material so sensitive that it could generate electricity even at night.  That would be revolutionary.

The technology is on display in the Vitra Design Museum in Essen, Germany.  There is also research for a soft city currently being done.  Calculations indicate that 10% roof coverage in Parts of Portugal, for instance, could provide up to 70% of the average electricity needed for a house in the area.  This is a very reasonable portion of the roof to cover.  Eventually, Kennedy hopes that single homeowners or entire neighborhoods could wean themselves from the grid and power their homes using the energy from these materials.

Kennedy compares this to urban farming.  One of the reasons this isn't happening already is simply old habits and the existing building systems already in place.  The technology exists today to make the change if people could be made aware of it.