Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

U Toledo Developing Solar Sheets to Generate Power in Space

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 02/26/21

The University of Toledo just received a five-year, $12.5 million grant from the U.S. Air Force to develop flexible solar cell sheets for space. The photovoltaic energy sheets will be used to collect solar energy for powering Earth-based receivers or other orbital or aerial instrumentation, such as communications satellites.

Physicists at the institution will develop flexible solar cell sheets, each about the size of a piece of paper, which can be assembled and connected into considerably larger structures. A single space-based array could use tens of millions of the sheets and extend to sizes as large as a square mile. (U Toledo won't be engineering the arrays, however.) An array of that size is projected to be able to generate about 800 megawatts of electrical power, enough to power about 130,000 houses on earth for the day.

Professor Randall Ellingson receives grant from U.S. Air Force
Randall Ellingson, a professor of physics, received a $12.5 million grant from the U.S. Air Force to develop space-based solar energy sheets for transmitting clean power back to Earth or satellites in orbit.
Source: University of Toledo

The researchers are building tandem solar cells—two cells stacked on top of each other that are more efficient for harvesting the sun's spectrum—on ultra-thin, flexible supporting materials. The team will "sandwich" various groupings of solar cells, including perovskites, silicon, cadmium telluride and copper indium gallium selenide, to see what the optimal combination is. The team will also investigate the use of lightweight, flexible supporting material—thin ceramic, plastics and glass—to create the large solar cell sheets. According to the physicists, those materials need to be "resilient, ultra-thin and tolerant to high and low temperatures."

"With 37% stronger sunlight above the atmosphere than on a typical sunny day here on Earth's surface, orbital solar arrays offer a critical opportunity to harness renewable energy, achieve sustainability goals and provide strategic power for a wide range of orbital and airborne technologies," said Randall Ellingson, a professor in the university's Department of Physics and Astronomy, member of the school's Wright Center for Photovoltaics Innovation and Commercialization and leader of the project, in a statement.

This isn't the first time Ellingson has worked with the Air Force on space projects. In 2019, his team received $7.4 million to develop solar technology to power space vehicles using sunlight.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • Round Rock ISD Completes New Early College High School

    Round Rock ISD near Austin, Texas, recently announced that construction is complete on a new, 46,500-square-foot campus for Early College High School, according to a news release. The new facility will allow the school’s students and staff to move from portables into a permanent building and increase its enrollment to 500.

  • College of the Desert Hits Construction Milestone on New Campus

    College of the Desert recently announced that the construction of its new Palm Springs Campus in Palm Springs, Calif., recently reached a major construction milestone, according to a news release. The college is partnering with general contractor C.W. Driver Companies, which recently “topped out” the facility by placing the final beam in its structure.

  • Stanford Completes Construction on Graduate School of Education Facility

    Stanford University in Stanford, Calif., recently announced the end of construction on a new home for its Graduate School of Education, according to a news release. The university partnered with McCarthy Building Companies on the 160,000-square-foot project, which involved two major renovations and one new construction effort.

  • Surging Demand for Student Housing Fuels Major Campus Investment Opportunities

    University leaders throughout the U.S. are accelerating plans to modernize and expand student housing as enrollment stabilizes and demand for on-campus living rebounds. Recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics indicates that total postsecondary enrollment is projected to grow through the end of the decade, with undergraduate enrollment alone expected to increase by more than 8 percent by 2030.