IKEA Selling Solar Panels!

         The Sweden-based company known as Ikea, best known for cheap basics such as its Billy bookcases and Ektorp sofas, plans to offer solar panel packages at all of its 17 British stores within the next 10 months. It said the move follows a successful pilot project at its Lakeside store to the east of London, which sells one photovoltaic system almost every day.
        Britain offers subsidies to encourage the takeup of photovoltaic panels in a bid to boost production and help it meet legally-binding targets to cut carbon emissions. A solar panel owner receives subsidies for generating solar-sourced electricity exporting excess power into the grid. An average semi-detached house would earn as much as $1,200 a year through subsidies and savings on energy bills, an IKEA case study showed.
      IKEA's offer of panels made by China's Hanergy Holding Group Ltd., a power producer and manufacturer of thin-film photovoltaic panels, involves a minimum spend of 5,700 pounds for which customers get 18 panels which should break even within roughly 7 years. "We know that our customers want to live more sustainably and we hope working with Hanergy to make solar panels affordable and easily available helps them do just that," said Joanna Yarrow, IKEA's head of sustainability in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

The World's First Solar-Powered Helicopter Takes Flight

      As projects like the Solar Impulse and NASA's Helios wing has been recently developed, the idea of propelling aircraft using solar power isn't as fanciful or impossible to accomplish as it seemed before, even if they are still in experimental stages. Before long, we'll surely be able to see solar power used to aid traditional airplanes, even if it is not accompanied by main fuel.
     To show what is possible, a team of master students from the United Kingdom have built what they believe to be called the world's first "solar-copter," a quadrotor that flies solely on solar power. At the moment, it is capable only of short flights but the team had claimed that it should fly longer soon, once they enabled it to have a storage system as well.

     "The Solar-copter is a quadrotor design that incorporates a solar panel providing the power for the propulsion system," the six students had commented. "It is controlled in the same way as a standard battery-powered quadrotor. Optimum thrust-to-weight ratio was mainly achieved through an efficient propulsion system, unique frame design and an optimized solar panel."

     Future versions may be useful in activities such as surveillance, search and rescue, and tracking animal migrations, perhaps in Africa, Australia, Middle East, and Southern Europe, where there is more sun than in England. Its technology could also help increase the range of conventional choppers, and perhaps give other solar aircraft, such as the Solar Impulse, better maneuverability and control.

How to build a Solar Panel

1. Treat yourself to some powdered doughnuts and herbal tea. The powdered sugar on US-style doughnuts contains titanium dioxide (TiO2 or E171). This is a semiconductor that can be used to make solar cells. To extract the TiO2 in a useful form, first scrape off all the powder and put it in a cup of warm water. Stirring this will dissolve all the sugar (there is a lot of it).

2. Running the whitish water through a coffee filter will leave behind a white blob -- this is the precious TiO2, along with some unwanted fat.

3. Because the fat is useless for solar cells, you'll need to put the residue in a hot oven for a few hours to vaporise it. The TiO2 remains as nanoparticles, each around 100nm wide.

4. Throw these particles into high-proof ethanol (vodka will do: use 1ml per doughnut) and shake.

5. Now conductive glass is needed (tough to find, but indium-doped tin oxide is best). With an eye dropper or syringe, drop ten layers of the nanoparticle spirit on the glass, allowing it to dry with each layer. Then put it back in the oven.

6. This is now a solar cell, but it will work only with UV light (the bad kind). Here is where the tea comes in. Leave the nanoparticle solar cell sitting in a cup of hibiscus tea for a couple hours, and soon it will have absorbed the colour, shifting its useful range from UV (useless) to visible light.

7. To collect energy from this solar cell, you'll need a counter-electrode. Take another piece of conducting glass and use a dark pencil to cover the surface with graphite.

8. To get your electricity to your counter-electrode, a generous amount of iodine in high-proof alcohol works well as an electrolyte. Use one part alcohol to three parts Lugol's solution -- available from health stores and aquarium suppliers.

9. Cut a hole in some thin plastic or tape to use as a spacer, and place it on the nanoparticle cell. Drop some electrolyte on top, and quickly sandwich the two electrodes together with some bulldog clips.

10. You're done! A multimeter connected to both of the conducting electrodes should show about half a volt when in the sun.

This article was taken from the March issue of Wired UK magazine.