Rolling solar around the spheres

Solar cells that you can roll up and carry from place to place have been a headline promise for years in the materials science subfield of flexible electronics. The technology made a big-stage debut recently as part of the rock band Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres world tour. The performers piloted a system called Printed Solar from the flexible solar start-up Kardinia Energy, taking an average of 10 KW h per day of power from the sun instead of from the local electrical grid. That’s enough juice to run the “C stage,” a smaller satellite performing area that extends into the crowd from the main stage, and many of the backstage operations for a whole performance, according to Kardinia.

The company creates the cells by printing semiconducting polymers onto a polyethylene terephthalate substrate. Each strip has an output of around 40 W. To deploy the photovoltaics at any given venue, Coldplay’s crew lays the strips of solar on the seats behind the stage or in other unused locations around the stadium. Coldplay used the system during the European leg of the tour; at US locations including Foxborough, Massachusetts, and Las Vegas, Nevada; and is bringing it on their current trip through the UK.

Credit: Anna Lee Media

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