Lighter, Smaller And Inexpensive Solar Panels Just A Paper Cut Away [Video]

An ancient Japanese art of papercutting called Kirigami may just be the missing ingredient in making solar energy cheaper to produce.

Researchers at University of Michigan have designed solar panels made from lightweight, space-grade plastic which can track sun across the sky, increasing energy production efficiency by as much as 36 percent. Solar tracking is an important feature of solar panels to increase efficiency but is expensive. Tracking solar panels are also ten times heavier and bulkier than stationery panels.

"The beauty of our design is, from the standpoint of the person who's putting this panel up, nothing would really change. But inside, it would be doing something remarkable on a tiny scale: the solar cell would split into tiny segments that would follow the position of the sun in unison," said Max Shtein, associate professor at the university said in a press release.

The design that researchers produced is what many children discover in classrooms while cutting paper - rows of cuts that on one side of paper, interspersed with uncut paper that allows the paper to stretch and rebound. This simple design was also found to be most effective for tilting. After initially trying designs on paper, researchers made them out on Kapton, high quality space-grade plastic.

Though the team could not produce solar cells of required dimensions given production limitations at the university, simulations showed that the design resulted in energy efficiency comparable to conventional tracking solar panels.

"We think it has significant potential, and we're actively pursuing realistic applications," he said. "It could ultimately reduce the cost of solar electricity," Shtein added.