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Has anyone noticed that there has been a surge in alternative power ideas coming to fruition now that energy costs are skyrocketing?

The newest one that I have come across are solar power film cells that can be printed off of an inkjet printer. Like electricity, consumers will gravitate to the least expensive solution. When one form of energy gets too expensive then the research and design costs for new technology become affordable.

The past 30 years or so have had it all backwards. We will have alternative and sustainable energy sources that will fill the void for consumers and homeowners when the costs make sense not when conventional wisdom deems it important for us to partake of it.

Konarka Technologies, the Massachusetts-based company we first recognized with a 2005 Breakthrough Award for its affordable Power Plastic solar film, said this week that it has successfully manufactured those thin solar cells using an inkjet printer. In addition to decreasing production costs because it relies on existing inkjet technology, the printable Power Plastic cells can be applied to a range of small-scale, highly variable power opportunities, from indoor sensors to small RFID installations.

With printers now capable of producing solar cells, other companies might be able to use plastics and other colors in developing new kinds of power-packing film. But the inkjet process is just one of several different manufacturing techniques Konarka has been busy demonstrating for its solar collectors over the last three years. “Compared to current PV technologies, the Power Plastic has an advantage in flexibility, greater sensitivity to low light and versatility,” Konarka president and CEO Rick Hess says of the film cells, which are fused from liquid containing semiconducting polymers. via Popular Mechanics.

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