Comments on: Solar Harvesting Textiles Energize ‘Soft House’

By: sarak

sarak — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 01:13:49 +0000

It’s really interesting idea. I wonder what happens in the case of a desert climate, when
sun is extremely strong.Can this solar textiles system be feasible strategy then?

By: Solar Soft House converts household curtains into household current | My Best Blogroll

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 20:39:00 +0000

[...] entirely in solar textiles is still too costly at the moment. Cost measured in cash, apparently.Read | Permalink | Email [...]

By: LMerry

LMerry — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 15:55:02 +0000

This is great and very creative! I will add the case study to my “Find Your Dream Job in Solar” class in the “Cool Solar Stuff Coming Someday” section.

It’s easy to become jaded when you see these great designs because they never seem to get to market. The first step is design/production/field testing, but the longer (and I think trickier) road is taking design to production and to the marketplace.

If you need a place to test these I volunteer my neighborhood Village Homes (Davis, CA). We all have solar oriented houses that use curtains to reduce the summer heat.

Keep up the great work. The world is in great need of this.

By: Jorge Chapa

Jorge Chapa — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 23:06:11 +0000

@eastpole, The house would generate about half the power that it needs, so the solar curtain technology is not yet fully efficient. My guess is that as technology gets better, we will see solar textiles that are able to get power from the ambient and reflected sunlight. Remember that this is a prototype for an application, not an actual house, yet.

By: Scott

Scott — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 10:21:13 +0000

@eastpole
Good points. But I wouldn’t write off the research on solar harvesting textiles yet. yes a vertical surface has less solar exposure than a horizontal or low sloped surface but it is still a surface and i would assume that the benefits for this are directly proportional to cost. According to this article, the product is cost prohibitive now, but technology takes random leaps forward, so who knows what this research will turn into in 5 years. Also the kvarch website implies, but does not state, that the product produces about half of what an average house uses in a day: http://www.kvarch.net/#project/soft_house

It also looks like the designer is being smart about this and is putting the curtain outside where it gets the most light and then you can have a real insulated wall and not a house made of windows.

By: eastpole

eastpole — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 02:04:23 +0000

I have another question, Jorge! The textiles are all hung vertically. At noon, one might think, the sun is shining straight down. Will it strike the PV fabrics at all? Or does the house have a strange tendency to generate the *least* power when the sun is shining most strongly, but picking up (you’d hope) when the sun angles are longer?

It’s a strange design decision. I’d have thought you’d just carpet the (flat, out of sight) roof in panels and then hang some nice white or mylar sheets to cast morning shade and keep the place cool. Am I out of touch?

By: Solar Soft House converts household curtains into household current | everygizmo.com

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 21:57:32 +0000

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By: eastpole

eastpole — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 13:26:12 +0000

Jorge,

Very interesting story, nice to see some alternatives to the tried and true rigid panels, even if the textiles are less efficient. But I am puzzled by: “…her team from KVA Matx has designed the Soft House, a structure that can create close to 16,000 watt-hours of electricity…” In a week? A month? A year? 16 kWh isn’t much energy, about half what a typical house here in southern Canada uses in a day. Is this a tropical house or is it adaptable to the temperate zones too? Was the 16 kWh per ____ figure arrived at by modeling sun from California? Germany? It’s nice to see a technology but it would be even nicer to have some sense of scale as to what it can do.

Regards,
tai viinikka (http://www.eastpole.ca)