Photo Credit: austinevan

Until recently, my knowledge of holographic technology was limited to three items: the 3-D stickers I collected as a kid, the shifty image on my driver’s license, and the sarcastic virtual doctor aboard the Starship Enterprise on Star Trek: Voyager (don’t ask, I’m already embarrassed enough). Prism Solar Technologies, Inc. has brought a new dimension to my fairly flat comprehension of the world of holographics.

Prism Solar has developed the means by which the sun’s rays can be filtered through a holographic film and more efficiently directed and utilized. Panels using holographic optical elements (HOE), according to Prism Solar, reduce the amount of silicon needed to produce solar panels by about 85 percent.

Not only is reducing the amount of silicon used good for the environment, it’s also good for the pocketbook. Prism Solar’s panels can produce a watt of electricity for well under a dollar, which is a significant savings over the productivity of a traditional photovoltaic solar panel. The holographic panels are so efficient that they can produce more kilowatts of energy on an annual basis than their more-conventional counterparts.

The ability to diffract certain wavelengths of the sun’s power gives any solar panel using Prism Solar’s HOEs the ability to produce power more efficiently by keeping the temperature of the unit at lower levels. While typical PV cells accept all of the sun’s rays and operate with an excess of heat, which slows its productivity of wattage down, the holographic panels stay much cooler.

Photo Credit: The Energy Blog

Just last month Prism Solar closed on a production facility atop 6.5 acres of land in upstate New York. They are busily renovating the facility and hope to be in full production of their holographic film in the near future. Prism Solar’s new production plant will create approximately 400 jobs over the next five years during their quest to create 60 megawatts of solar components as well as 1000 megawatts of their holographic film to be sold to other solar module manufacturers.

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Posted on April 21st in Solar Products by Jennifer.