Solar panels are quite an inefficient form of renewable energy – only around 20 percent of incoming sunlight is turned into energy. However, with a little help from millions of years of evolution and some algae, solar panels could start to shape up.
Founded in 2014, Swedish Algae Factory is an algae cultivator with a sustainable mindset. The company, a self-proclaimed “visionary algae lab,” works with a specific strain of Diatom algae that can endure and multiply in the grim low-light, low-temperature conditions of the Nordic sea and has a set of remarkable abilities.
The outer shell of the algae allows it to absorb light very efficiently, enabling it to survive its harsh conditions. CEO Sofie Allert and her team discovered a way to harness this capacity to increase the efficiency of solar panels. “Basically what we do, is that we extract a material from algae that is designed by over a 100 million years of evolution to secure the survival of a specific algae group,” Sofie told TNW via email.
“The material constitutes the shell of a microscopic algae group called diatoms. This nanoporous silica material is naturally designed to trap visible light extremely efficiently in order to secure that the algae photosynthesize even when there is not that much light present,” she continues.
Read more > More efficient solar panels… in algae?
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