Solar panels love the direct midday sun, but they’re not fans of angles. It’s a flaw that energy engineers have been trying to work around since the invention of the first panel.
When the sun’s rays become more oblique, the light simply bounces off the panels. This is a major waste of energy.
Engineers are now thinking out of the box and into the hexagon.
The blueprint for an ancient geometrical solution was in the wild the whole time.
Could bees hold the answer to one of solar panels’ biggest shortcomings?
How basic angles cost the solar industry energy
Traditional solar panels are limited by their two-dimensionality. They lie flat and wait for the sun to hit directly at midday.
But the sun doesn’t sit still. The angle of its beams is more oblique the further it is from the middle of the day.
When light hits a panel sideways, high optical reflection becomes a problem.
Valuable light bounces off the protective glass and returns to the atmosphere. That energy is lost.
To work around the light leak, engineers had to rethink solar architecture entirely. The flat grid was abandoned for a concave 3D design using metamaterials.
It’s an ingenious structural alteration that allows the panels to grab light from almost any angle. And no expensive tracking motors are required.
With computer simulation growing in intelligence daily, you may think this was behind the innovation.
But it’s actually inspired by an ancient geometric configuration from the natural world.
How does this unique shape trap light?
Giving energy a second chance: Ricochets have made all the difference
The new 3D concave module sees sunlight hitting a slanted wall and bouncing off onto the opposite wall. Instead of being lost to space, the panel has a second chance to absorb the energy.
The process is called enhanced light recapture, and scientists are working hard to apply it in new tech.
The stats are beyond positive and bordering on amazing. Under the same conditions as a flat panel, this design reached a maximum output increase of 142.3%.
At the ideal zero-degree angle, power output grew by 36.4%.
At 60 degrees, where traditional panels have the most trouble, performance was boosted by 61.8%.
The delicate angles needed to be kept durable, so engineers came up with a flexible, printed polymeric mechanical metamaterial in 3D form.
The self-supporting grid is based on architecture found in nature. Is it the next great leap in renewable energy infrastructure design?
We’re still learning from bees after centuries of studying their smarts
The humble honeybee is the architect behind the optimal 3D shape.
Engineers are using exact replicas of honeycombs to base their new 3D concave design on.
Bees realized millions of years ago that this shape uses the absolute minimum amount of wax to meet their needs. And the result is maximum volume and strength.
Researchers didn’t mess with the formula. Because, as it so often happens, nature knows best.
Turning honey-making science into a super solar solution
The layout was applied to solar engineering. The result of tilting the hexagonal walls was microvalleys that trap protons. They do this the same way a hive produces honey.
The positive results have the potential to change the whole renewable energy game.
The flexibility of the metamaterial backing means that these units are not limited to flat surfaces like roofs. It can be applied to curved walls, electric cars, or aerospace equipment.
Everyday surfaces now have the potential to be efficient generators of power. All it took was looking inside the hive.
What other engineering secrets are hiding in plain sight right in our own backyards?
You can check the complete study here: M. J. Yun, Y. H. Sim, D. Y. Lee, S. I. Cha, Honeycomb-Structured 3D Concave Photovoltaic Modules Supported by 3D Mechanical Metamaterials for Enhanced Light Recapture. Adv. Mater. Technol.2023, 8, 2201360. https://doi.org/10.1002/admt.202201360