The same power from less material
A solar panel designed to cut the cost of harnessing the sun’s energy will go on the market next year. Its trick is to focus sunlight that strikes the entire panel onto far smaller slabs of the pricey material that turns light into electrical energy.
Called Heliotubes, the panels are designed to improve on today’s solar concentrators, which use sun-tracking dishes to collect sunlight. These dishes need space in which to move, so they occupy twice the area of flat panels that gather the same amount of light. This rules them out for sites…
