No that’s not a misspelling; the Sacramento based nano-tech solar manufacturer really does spell it that way. After reading about their innovative new solar brush I don’t know why and I don’t care; it’s just cool. The company was originally known as Q1 NanoSystems.
“The name change to Bloo Solar reflects the company’s new look, and it represents Bloo’s products which capture and convert more of the sun’s power than anything available in the marketplace today”, said Larry Bawden, President and CEO of Bloo Solar.
The technology was developed by Bloo Solar’s founders Ruxandra Vidu, Brian Argo, John Argo, and Pieter Stroeve, a professor at U.C. Davis. The rights to technology relating to the manufacturing were acquired from U.C. Davis in February of 2008.
The solar brush, so called because it uses billions of vertically grown nano cables on a thin film, captures sunlight and turns it into electricity pretty much from daybreak to sundown rather than just during the brightest parts of the day. The surface area is increased a whopping 700% over traditional thin film solar products. Counter-intuitively Bloo’s solar brush uses 90% less material than the current silicon based solar panels. The system will considerably cheaper to manufacture resulting in a solar system that costs less than grid energy. More surface area, more output, less material, less money; bears repeating.
But there’s more; because of this remarkable new technology the need for tracking systems is eliminated greatly simplifying installation. Simplified also translates into less money and a wider variety of locations it can be installed in.
According to Cleantech:
The company is forecasting commercialization of its technology at the beginning of 2010, envisioning an initial 25-30 megawatt fab in California with as-yet unnamed partners helping scale manufacturing.
Let’s hope it turns into a product that we can actually purchase and start installing soon!
Popularity: 7% [?]
Leave a Reply