- During a battle, the ability to move troops swiftly and
without detection can mean the difference between victory and defeat. The
U.S. Army is developing tents and uniforms made from flexible solar panels
to make it more difficult to track soldiers.
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- Jean Hampel, project engineer in the Fabric Structures
Group at the Army's Natick Soldier Systems Center, said the need to reduce
the Army's logistics footprint spurred interest in developing lightweight
solar panels. "We want to cut back on the things that soldiers have
to bring with them," including generators and personal battery packs,
Hampel said. In modern warfare, portable power for communications technology
is every bit as important as firepower and manpower.
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- The Army is testing flexible solar panels developed by
Iowa Thin Film Technologies that can be layered on top of a tent, or rolled
up into a backpack to provide a portable power source. Tents using solar
panels made from amorphous silicon thin film on plastic can provide up
to 1 kilowatt of energy, which is sufficient to power fans, lights, radios
or laptops, according to Hampel.
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- Hampel said using solar tents would reduce the need for
diesel powered generators and diminish the "thermal signature"
that enemy sensors use to track troop location. She said soldiers could
carry smaller flexible solar panels and unfold them during the day to collect
energy to recharge their personal communications equipment.
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- This would enable soldiers to lighten their loads of
extra battery packs, which are sometimes left behind and reveal the soldiers'
presence, according to Hampel. While Iowa Thin Film's PowerFilm products
are ready for field use, the Army's "type classification" process,
which enables them to be purchased in bulk, will require one to two years
of additional testing.
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- Iowa Thin Film's plastic-based products are an improvement
over previous generations of solar panels that layer the panels onto less-flexible
metal, company spokesman Mike Coon said. He said the amorphous silicon
products are also cheaper to produce because the panel connectors that
centralize the collected energy are laser-welded during the production
process; standard photovoltaic panels must be individually connected.
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- Coon said standard PV panels are uniform in size, but
his company's products can be cut into modules of different sizes, which
maximizes the efficiency of power collection. Coon said Iowa Thin Film
custom-made the solar panel fabric that is layered onto tents for the Army
and the smaller foldable panels became commercially available in late 2003.
The PowerFilm products are currently more expensive than traditional solar
panels, but Coon said improvements in the manufacturing process will enable
them to be cost-competitive within two to five years.
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- The Army's long-term vision is to have solar panels that
can be camouflaged into tents or even uniforms, Hampel said. Her group
is working with Konarka Technologies to develop nanotechnology-based solar
panels that can be woven directly into fabric. Konarka's technology replaces
silicon with dye polymer plastics that transform any kind of light into
electrical energy.
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- Using plastics as the basis for solar panels will result
in a faster manufacturing process than silicon fabrication plants, said
Russell Gaudiana, vice president of research and development at Konarka.
Gaudiana likened the process to producing photographic film (he previously
worked at Kodak), and said the solar panels can be printed in any color.
"Our solar panels can be woven into any fabric, including tents, clothing
or roofing material," he said.
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- The technology would reduce the cost of installing solar
panels on new buildings because they could be applied as part of the roof
itself instead of as an additional step, according to Gaudiana. And instead
of having a small solar panel on a handheld or notebook, the entire surface
area could be used to recharge the batteries.
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- Gaudiana said the technology is still in the research
phase, and declined to give a timetable of its availability. It would likely
be cost-competitive with other technologies initially and would be cheaper
when it is mass-produced.
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- Solar energy consultant Paul Maycock of PV Energy Systems
said the Army has been interested in flexible solar cells for about 10
years. "It's very important that we have reliable portable electricity
for telecommunication-based military," Maycock said.
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- Companies have been producing solar panels using amorphous
silicon on steel for several years, but several failed because they could
not advance the technology quickly enough to keep up with rigid photovoltaic
systems, Maycock said. He said the Army has continued to fund development
of the technology because the materials to date have been too heavy and
not cost-efficient.
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- "The technology has thousands of applications"
if it can be made at affordable prices, Maycock said. "Imagine that
if you go to the beach, the shade could be used to power a TV."
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