What do you do when a vital mass produced product doesn’t meet your requirements? Fret about it and if it goes really bad, you call support to give them a piece of your mind? Well, Alex Hornstein and Shawn Frayne had these problems with the panels they were using to power their electronic devices. But, instead of doing all the unproductive acts, they sat down and managed to make a solar panel printer in their backyard that can make solar panels within fifteen seconds!
The Solar Pocket Factory is currently undergoing Kickstarter funding for launch, and it will be no surprise if they manage to get significant funds from the crowd. They got the idea for this startup when they had converted all of their power-hungry gadgets to solar energy, but the problem prevailed. It did so because of the poor quality of the panels they purchased. Around 15% of the panels had flaws in their assemblies, and their material often disintegrated within a few years.
So they sat down to decrease the inefficiency in the assembly process. They found out that by automation of the solar panel production, the price could be reduced by 25% and the number of defects would be reduced too. Instead of making them in large manufacturing units, they opted to make a smaller, cheaper and faster version to be installed in homes. It has the appearance of a typical desktop printer. So, if a panel is made within fifteen seconds, year-long operations would see millions in production and that too from a small unit in a cottage industry.
This product has the ability to introduce solar panels and their manufacturing throughout the world instead of limiting it to big manufacturers in China. We all know renewable energy is the future and inventions like these will help us shift it to them on a global basis.