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Technology

Solar Clothes 70

Posted by michael from the recharge-my-shirt dept.
Ant sent this link to a story about solar-powered clothes, well, solar-powering, maybe. This may be the breakthrough we've been waiting for to convince computer geeks to spend some time in the sun.
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Solar Clothes More

Solar Clothes

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  • It's better than that. Start thinking old science fiction... ("The Time Machine" by H.G. Wells, IIRC).
  • That "solar closhtes" doesn't mean "dresing yourself in sunlight" . . .


    hawk, let down

  • This feels like it would feed the myth about geeks being a lit like vampires....
    Even though I myself don't get much sun when I hide away with my servers I usualy try to get some sun....

    How long will it be before the surgeon general releases a warning about staying to long in the sun with your laptop :-)
    Don't compute in the sun, you might get cancer.
    Outlet power is cancer-safe!

    I think you get the point.

    // yendor
    --
    It could be coffe.... or it could just be some warm brown liquid containing lots of caffeen.
  • Where do you get shirts that survive 1000 washings? That's some amazing uptime.
  • And nearly everyone believes that they have the average number of arms. Most people actually have more than the average number of arms.

  • Actually, I don't think there will be enough power to run a monkey ball sucker.
  • Clothes have pockets. Without a place to put our pocket protectors we are lost.
  • Are you actually arguing that all you need to turn a solar sweater into a monkey ball sucker is a potato? OK, if you say so, I'll believe you.

  • I think we've found our monkey ball sucker.
  • I'd like to have a tent made out of this fabric, to power my laptop while camping.
  • It's the power source that is used for making the ingredients to pizza.
    ---
  • Surely they would have, since your joke is "all clear."
    ---
  • Just what geeks need: Another reason to be afraid of shorts...

    Kevin Fox
    --
  • if you washed it every day, it would take 3 years to wash it 1000 times!--are your 1000 batteries going to last that long, and are you going to have thm when you need them?--I am not trying to say it's usefull, just that 1000 washings is quite a few!
  • Umm, just at a guess, tents have more surface areas than laptops, and I betcha the power to surface area ratio on this fabric will suck monkey balls.
  • That you would want to wear clothes. What is the point of being in the sun with clothes on?
    <P>
    <P>Americans... sheesh.
    <P>
    <P>Also, it sounds like these things are not going to work so well after a few cycles through the washer and dryer.
  • damn this mozilla 8.1
  • (1) How flexible are these fibres? Can they take the standard wrinkling/crumpling associated with clothes?

    (2) How light are they?

  • Solar cells based on amorphous silicon are less efficient than their crystalline cousins, but they still have many advantages, he says.

    Although I can see some advantages of having flexible solar arrays, some of the issues right now aren't so much the flexibility, as most arrays are flat parts which fold up. If you need to fit to a curved surface, you just use a series of smaller cells to approximate the surface, and then use a conformal coating as a sealant.

    The issues that I see, however, is that they admit that these are less efficient, how large of an array are we going to need to get a useful amount of power? Last time I looked into it [1995 or so], agricultural solar cells were considered to be about 20-22% efficient. Hughes Electronics at the time had some that were 35% efficient, but you were looking at paying through the nose for 'em [US$100k per square meter worth, assuming you could find a supplier]

    Looking at some current numbers [ise.fhg.de], it looks like these have a chance at being near 10% efficient. To take things into perspective, the typical solar car for the GM Sunrayce in 1995 had an 8 meter squared solar array, and produced at most 200W per square meter under optimal conditions. [Normally 100-150W]. If we assume that we're going to get 50W/meter from these clothes, we can compare them to a standard NiMH rechargable AA battery.

    Looking at the battery stats on a very efficient [apple.com] laptop, you're looking at needing 10W to run it [50W*hr battery lasts 5hrs]. The Sony Vaio [sony.com] lists its power requirements as needing a peak of 49.5W. [A single battery is 1.8mAH@19.5V, so about 35W*hr, and lasts 2.5hr, so typical would be 14W draw].

    Naturally, a larger, more feature rich portable would require more draw. Realistically, we might assume 20-30W. Which means we'd need 1/2 a meter squared of exposed surface. [about 775 sq in, or 5.4 sq ft]

    So, based on these calculations, any of you skinny nerds are going to need to find a few more fat people wearing these shirts to sit next to you while you game.

    [oh, and hey, it was 6 years ago when I was working on a solar car. My numbers may be off a bit, as I didn't get much sleep during those days]

  • dont count on it.
  • that's pretty good. that's pretty good.
  • uh huh.. cause I often sit in my tent and use the net during the day, or were you thinking that you might just have some battery that can hold a long charge and lug it around with you, if so, why not just recharge it before you leave? No, I'm sure it would be great for going on really long camping trips when you just cant carry that many batteries and you're away from civilization for so long.
  • I don't get it...if the sun is a power source, and you want to tap into it...then perfect an industrial convertor to do the job. How are fat people and sails even considered viable real-estate to use as a source for solar energy?

    Tom Green could make a solar rant out of this...solar on my hand, solar on my foot, solar on my bum, solar on my head! Yippee!

    But...I think optically conductive clothes would be cool though. Especially if you could create a pattern of the fiber terminations, to go 180 degrees around the individual and come out on the other side. You should be able to get near phase coherent re-routing of the optical path. Or in laymans terms, invisibility.
  • "...for a laptop that gathers power for it, to extend battery life! "

    This is a more likely application, based on the efficiency issues already mentioned. Simply making the existing battery more effective and the resulting power delivery more efficient.

  • Event the huge ones used for solar powered cars can barely power a blow drier.

    Surprisingly, blow driers suck alot of power; 1500W in a pretty standard one. That's ALOT, more than some TV's, so powering a blow drier is no small feat. And I'm sure you know that TV's can most certainly electrocute you. ;-)

    -----
    "Goose... Geese... Moose... MOOSE!?!?!"
  • I believe Vitamin D is manufactured in your cells when exposed to sunlight.

    -----
    "Goose... Geese... Moose... MOOSE!?!?!"
  • What about solar powered circus tents. Now that is a bright idea.

    Are you trying to be clever? I almost missed that one. ;-)

    -----
    "Goose... Geese... Moose... MOOSE!?!?!"
  • CON: It's a friggin sweater! Who wants to wear a sweater on a warm sunny day?
  • Or what about powering your ibm linux watch?

    The article says the people who are involved with this admit they are a ways off so this is all what if hype. If they happen to hit a brick wall with this technology you probably won't see anything out of it but the concept and some of their research is interesting however.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Imagine a beowulf cluster of us!
  • Half the clothes are facing away from the direct sunlight, but reflected light will also work (bot as well though).

  • Please get your units right. A Watt is a Joule per second. A Joule is a unit of energy (J = N*m). The kilowatt-hour is (kJ/s)*h, where h is 3600 seconds (one hour). Dimensionally it is the same as kJ.

    If the device is generating 100 watts, ie 100 Joules per second, then it will generate 100 watt-hours in an hour, or 0.1 kWh. In 10 hours it will generate 1 kWh, not kW/h.

    kW/h is truly a bizarre unit; it's dimensionally identical to J/s^2, which looks like an acceleration of power consumption. So maybe one could say "the average power consumption in California over the past 5 years is increasing at a rate of 20 kW/h" (numbers made up). An annual rate seems more likely to be reported.

    Besides, I don't think they're suggesting this for saving on your electricity, but rather for providing convenient electricity without batteries.

  • Sounds good, but it turns out from thermodynamics that the highest possible efficiency of turning heat into useful energy depends on the temperature of the hot and cold body. Specifically, the efficiency is

    1 - Tl/Th

    where Tl is the low temperature and Th is the high temperature, both in Kelvin (or Rankine, for you Americans). So if his body temperature is 37C or 310K, and the outside temperature is room temperature at 20C or 293K, the maximum efficiency is 0.05484 or about 5%. That's pretty bad. Even in a cold Canadian winter at -30C or 243K, the best is less than 22%. And we can't actually build anything that good, it's the theoretical maximum (Carnot efficiency).

    So unless your friend likes working outside on really cold days, he won't get much energy output. Also keep in mind that at rest a human puts out about 80W, so even on this winter day he'll only get about 17.3 watts, which isn't enough to run a modern Intel chip.

    Incidentally to convert Celsius to Kelvin add 273, and Farenheit to Rankine add 460.

  • So we can use a Sun system to power our electronic doodads? I think that violates a few laws of thermodynamics, but other than that it sounds great.


    My mom is not a Karma whore!
  • What is this "sun" thing of which you speak?


    My mom is not a Karma whore!
  • Lets see, I could pay probably at least $20 for a shirt made out of this stuff, and in turn power my laptop with it while I sit outside.

    And for $2 I can buy myself some new underware, and wear those while sitting in front of this computer in my basement.

    I guess I'm just frugal(sp?) :o)


    Klowner
  • - Clothes that vibrate to give you a massage

    - a heating element (get burnt and electrocuted)

    Actually, what I'm waiting for is to move past fbrics and onto other types of synthetics. You know the typical sci-fi concept that we'll go to this type of silicon molded armor / clothing?

    Well, the obvious issue is that your skin won't be getting any fresh oxygen, unless you can fashion a material that is in some way changeably porous.

    And yes I know that last paragraph was slightly o/t, but what the hell.

    mick
  • I hope any clothing that would implement this wouldn't somehow zap you when the sun is nice and bright. Hope it's water proof too.... What next? Someone attaches jumper cables from their car to your shirt? I think I'll stick with batteries.

  • There is really no reason to spend time in the sun. Everyone knows that UV radiation causes permanent cellular damage, including premature aging, cancer, moles, keratosis, pterygium, and cataracts. With the ozone layer going, it will only get worse. And the vitamin D thing? Everyone knows you can get it from milk now. Besides, the U.S. government has classified most of the population as obese [about.com], and as we all know, fat people can't generate vitamin D too well [netbiosciencenews.com]. You'd be much better spending all your time in the dark...maybe in caves like our ancestors did. Then thousands of years from now, you can ring a civil siren and all the people of light will come to your door so you can eat them.
  • (3) How long before corporations start offering them as schwag?
  • What next? Someone attaches jumper cables from their car to your shirt? I think I'll stick with batteries.

    Really, you're not going to get much power off of solar panels. Event the huge ones used for solar powered cars can barely power a blow drier. I doubt you're in any danger of being electrocuted.
  • this article was posted about 2 months ago

  • Just because you can . . . (Score:4)

    by micromoog ( 206608 ) on Friday April 13, 2001 @10:05PM (#292393)
    Every so often on Slashdot, you hear about a new invention that's really going to change the world.

    This isn't one of them.

    I bet you could buy 1000 batteries for the price of one of these shirts (that ain't gonna survive 1000 washings).

  • But low priced, durable, decently efficient photovoltaic fabric could change the world.
  • I think he is talking about some 64bit computer hardware manufacturer, take a look at www.sun.com.
  • It's the hurt-light in the Big Room. Avoid it if you can, it's radioactive and insufficientlyshielded individuals will receive radiation burns after exposures of as little as 30 minutes.
  • Then thousands of years from now, you can ring a civil siren and all the people of light will come to your door so you can eat them.

    Did any moderators get this joke?
  • This is surely scored favorably as "funny", not "interesting". Why not make a laptop case out of said material, instead of a tent? For that matter, why not settle on a DC standard that could power Walkmans and GPS units out of backpacks, suitcases, and purses? You don't have to wash any of those very often, and you could easily lug around the same one of those every day...
    --
    There is no K5 [kuro5hin.org] cabal.
  • I'm not going to dredge up the link, but surely you recall the "potato powered computer"? Anything is possible.</SARCASM>
    --
    There is no K5 [kuro5hin.org] cabal.
  • ...that's asking for it to be soaked and churned in water followed by tossed and heated in a dryer. I remember learning something in school about water and electricity together being a Bad Idea, so the idea of making this tech into clothing seems out of the question.

    If you don't let any light into the washing machine, then there is no electricity.

    The battery would have to be waterproof...

    This fabric has no battery in it. It's a light-to-electricity converter, remember?

    ...the small amount [of power] that is actually being collected is discharging onto your sweat-covered body.

    This might be a problem. I don't know. Does anybody have comments on this?

  • MMmm... Sun.

    I goto sunny places, based soley on the fact that they are sunny. And have redhat offices.

    Yes, redhat.

    *loves Raleigh*

    Anyways, I think that these fibers could have very real applications, but not nessc. as cloting. Think of this: a wristpad for a laptop that gathers power for it, to extend battery life!

    Or as some have said, a beach umbrella that powers something.

    Although the same could be accomplished with solar panels, solar panelss are bulky and inflexible, so fibers like this are a definite turn on to the inventive side of me.

    *strides over to his drafting pc*

    Mmmm.... possibilty goodness....

  • People get grumpy whenit clouds up anyways. It's call [google.com]
  • ooops. People get grumpy whenit clouds up anyways. It's called Seasonal Attitude Disorder. [google.com]
  • I did. Geeks will rule the earth.
  • Us geeks achieved solar powered clothing years ago! First we had propeller baseball caps, a fashion statement that transcended decades, and then went electric with solar around about 1982. Some even had fans embedded in the peak to keep you cool whilst coding in the sun!

    ThinkGeek [thinkgeek.com] does not have them - Slashdot [slashdot.org] should be ashamed!
  • yah had some problems for ~5mins
  • I wonder what would happen if you got caught out in the rain in those "clothes"...

    Bzzzzz!

  • pros and cons (Score:3)

    by deran9ed ( 300694 ) on Saturday April 14, 2001 @12:17AM (#292408) Homepage
    Pros:

    You could do your work outdoors when sunny

    You could play Quake outdoors when sunny

    You could use your PC's @ the beach

    You could set up a bikinicam @ the beach

    You could do your banking outdoors

    Power a fridge to cool your beer on the beach

    Power your trailer (for all the trailer trah "folk")

    California has finally found a fix for their issues

    Cons:

    You forget sundown time and work gets lost

    You forget sundown and get fragged @ Quake

    Your PC becomes filled with sand and useless

    A sexy bikini chick kicks sand on your can fscking it up

    You forget sundown and wire someone else all your money

    A glitch turns your fridge into a heater so you suffer with warm beer

    You could live in a trailer

    Californian Power authority passes high taxes on solar powerd clothes

    use the source luke!!! [antioffline.com]

  • Why go out in the sun where there could be real people when there are electric sockets...

    /Geggibus "Where do you want to go tomorrow?"
  • okay.. so this material generates power.. it iwll most likely generate something in the area of a few watts an hour, we will say 100 for simplicity. (I know thats EXTREEMLY high) This means that it will take 10 hours to save one kW of power. Currently power prices are $.07 a kW/h (1000Watts an hour) so, to save seven cents you have to be outside for ten hours. This means that in the fifteen minutes it takes for me to goto work I save .175 cents! This means that it would take 1 and 2/3 of a year to save a dollar..

    This is either a 'not-very-effective' product, or I need to get out more.. I can't tell wich =)
  • Could be worse, they could attach the jumper cables to your nipples.
  • lets make up some numbers
    one person in 100 has one arm
    99 people have 2 arms
    the average number of arms is 1.98
    the average person has 2 arms
    case and point
    im drunk
  • I'm in the UK so there's no sun anyway..

    You know, this could be just what the industry needs to go full steam ahead to research and develop wearable electronics. Right now they have wearable stuff but you have to carry a huge and heavy battery for the power, which doesn't last that long either. That really sucks. But now you can carry a smaller battery.. which will constantly recharge.

    Levis and Philips have already developed a jacket which incorporates a mobile phone and MP3 player.. looking forward to strapping on a computer so i can play black and white on the train home.
  • Years from now when these guys actually make something functional out of this stuff it is not likely to be clothing. It is much more likely to be beach umbrellas or tents. Those are much better ideas and they will be stolen from right here at /.

    And the brilliant minds that came up with those ideas will not be recieving royalty checks in the mail either. Nor will we be able to hack the fabric; I doubt those guys believe in open source.

    What about solar powered circus tents. Now that is a bright idea. For all you corporate spies out there, I hereby patent that idea under the newly formulated Open Source Patent. And could you please make it run Apache too?

  • When you come up with a way to do this, please tell me.. :) Good luck with it.
  • I thought about this a bit more, and each time I think about it, clothes seem like less of a viable "platform" for this technology. Besides what I've seen earlier from other posters with regards to the "1000 washes" thing, I seriously doubt the tech could survive even one wash. Typically, that's asking for it to be soaked and churned in water followed by tossed and heated in a dryer. I remember learning something in school about water and electricity together being a Bad Idea, so the idea of making this tech into clothing seems out of the question. The battery would have to be waterproof as well as extremely resisitant to shock and heat. Now I'm not an electrical engineer, so I may be wrong on this assumption, but if a dry-cell battery is exposed, or rather, immersed, in water, wouldn't it short out and probably discharge all the power stored?

    Heck, if that's the case, then clothing wouldn't be viable at all. In order to get any really good sun exposure, you'd probably have to wear it as close to the coastline as possible within the tropics. There, it's really hot during midday, and you work up a sweat, which has the potential chance to come in contact with whatever form of battery the thing uses, and the next thing you know, you aren't really collecting any energy at all because the small amount that is actually being collected is discharging onto your sweat-covered body. Of course, that's a worst-case scenario, but it could very well turn into a potential legal battle if the tech actually becomes reality.
  • Well in that case, if the fabric has no battery in it, does it have something to regulate the amount of power it absorbs and store it somewhere or what? It almost sounds like if you wear this thing and DON'T plug anything into it, that eventually you'll have converted a lot of light to electricity and that electricity won't have gone anywhere.
  • I would think to get computer geeks out into the sun more often, they'd have to find a more efficient way of capturing sunlight. If you use clothes, about half the clothes would be facing away from the sun at any given time. I could see this being used more for setups like large beach umbrellas, where the thing is usually intentionally pointed at the sun to keep its user in the shade. Besides blocking the sun from scorching ya, it could also power your laptop. A more efficient use of the material than "solar-powered clothing".
  • I heard a company in Dublin is now putting full resources into an application that will CHANGE THE WORLD!!! Solar powered underwear...

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