It’s been said that there is nothing so boring as watching paint dry. Tell this to the researchers at the Swansea University School of Engineering in the United Kingdom who have developed a way to roll on solar-cell paint over steel cladding.
The project started as a way to help the steel manufacturing industry coat its steel to keep the metal from degrading. Then one of the doctoral students turned a project on how the sunlit degrades paint into how the paint can capture sunlight and use its photovoltaic effects to create electricity.
The solar paint is expected to be able to capture and convert approximately 5-percent of the inbound energy from the sun. While this may not sound like a lot, if spread across enough flexible steel surface, this could in fact generate a huge amount of energy.
For instance if all of the 100 million square meters of steel by Corus Colours were coated with solar paint, this would generate 4,500 gigawatts of power. And, while watching paint dry may be boring, watching it power your business may just make you sit up and take notice.