Solar Panel Kits and more...

Powerfilm Inc., a manufacturer of flexible solar film has applied its roll-to-roll proprietary manufacturing technology to produce flexible thin film solar panels.  Shown below, the thin film solar application includes interconnected backplane transistors with built in drivers for the front plane so that individual pixels can be turned on and off.

Powerfilm Thin Film Solar

Powerfilm manufactures flexible solar film, applied in Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) to generate solar electricity from the vertical faces of buildings or windows. Flexible solar film is also a great innovation for bus shelters roofs and golf cart canopies.

Flexible thin film solar rolls, as shown to the left, are less expensive and just as efficient as other PV panels.  Roll-to-roll manufacturing is akin to newspaper printing and can produce long continuous strips.

PowerFilm will produce 1 meter wide and up to 2400 feet long strips. The interconnection between the transistors is made fully automatic on the machine, eliminating the cost and quality issues with manual interconnection. The substrate is made of polyimide and can be encapsulated in a variety of materials depending on the end application and environmental conditions.

PowerFilm flexible solar electronic technology includes fabric or fiberglass backing for easy installation of the thin film solar panels.

Powerfilm licensed technology for self aligning imprint lithography from HP for the development of the backplane, which took  5 years of research and development. Flexible displays are useful for large outdoor advertising displays, e-book readers and other applications, where the lower cost and the self-power feature of this thin film solar application would be helpful.