This story, which has been picked up by the media, caught our eye recently: apparently, high frequencies and pitch found in pop and rock music causes vibrations that enhance energy generation in solar cells.
According to researchers from Imperial College in London, if you play Justine Bieber, One Direction or any other acoustic vibrations to a certain type of solar panel, then panel efficiency can be boosted by almost 50 per cent.
Of course, it sounds a perfect scenario – to listen to your favourite music while boosting the productivity of your renewable energy system – but unfortunately the technology is not close to being ready yet. In fact, the research team that discovered this ‘breakthrough’ used zinc oxide solar panels in the experiment (a cheaper, more flexible variant of traditional silicon-based solar cells), which only have an efficiency of 1.2 per cent at the moment. Compare this to the 20%+ efficiency of BenQ panels, and the research still has a long way to go!
Read the full story in New Scientist.
By SunGift Solar
