The Design and Development of Woven Textile Solar Panels

Abstract

Over the past few years, alternative power supplies to either supplement or replace batteries for electronic textile and wearable applications have been sought, with the development of wearable solar energy harvesting systems gaining significant interest. In a previous publication the authors reported a novel concept to craft a yarn capable of harvesting solar energy by embedding miniature solar cells within the fibers of a yarn (solar electronic yarns). The aim of this publication is to report the development of a large-area textile solar panel. This study first characterized the solar electronic yarns, and then analyzed the solar electronic yarns once woven into double cloth woven textiles; as part of this study, the effect of different numbers of covering warp yarns on the performance of the embedded solar cells was explored. Finally, a larger woven textile solar panel (510 mm × 270 mm) was constructed and tested under different light intensities. It was observed that a PMAX = 335.3 ± 22.4 mW of energy could be harvested on a sunny day (under 99,000 lux lighting conditions).