E very six seconds, in a factory on the northern fringes of Stockholm, a top secret printer is spewing out sheets worth thousands of euros apiece. Each one contains 108 miniature solar cells that will soon find their way into everyday gadgets – from keyboards to headphones – that will fundamentally change how we interact with technology. According to their creator, they will even force us to rethink our relationship with light.
Sweden may seem an unlikely location for a solar revolution, but the lack of light during the winter months was one of the reasons for Exeger co-founder Giovanni Fili to look beyond the Sun as the sole source of power for a photovoltaic cell. His company’s breakthrough tech can harvest electricity from virtually any light source, from direct sunlight to candlelight. It can even generate a charge from moonlight, though it would take a while for it to be of much use.
“Like the algae on the bottom of the ocean where it’s almost pitch black, we can make efficient use of very few photons,” Fili tells The Independent . The t-shirt he wears describes his company’s technology as “world-changing”, capable of simultaneously addressing the global need for energy and some of our planet’s greatest environmental challenges. Indoor solar panels have been around for decades.
Solar-powered calculators were first introduced in the 1970s, but the limitations of the amorphous silicon cells they rely upon mean they are too low power, too fragile and too.