Ireland’s only proprietary solar manufacturer, SolarPrint, is leaping ahead with its dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) and sending out pilot versions of its devices for remote applications. The company said its cells are 20 percent more efficient indoors then their competitors’ cells.

DSSC-based technologies are also called organic photovoltaics, they are much less efficient than other solar technologies like crystalline silicon, but they are much cheaper to produce, and can literally be printed on plastics or other substrates. They’re produced with technology similar to an inkjet printer and cured in an oven. Many other forms of photovoltaics are produced using expensive and sophisticated vacuums and/or high-heat, using a lot of energy that adds to their production costs.

The company’s cells are poised to challenge amorphous silicon photovoltaic dominance of the indoor market, explained Director of Business Development & Co Founder Roy Horgan. “As it stands amorphous silicon controls 100% of the indoor PV market,” he said. “Based on the tests we carried out on a like for like basis under the conditions described we…produce 20% more power for the same area [when compared to other technologies].”

SolarPrint said another advantage its DSSC cells offer is the ability to produce electricity with diffuse light at multiple angles to the light source. And the company said the DSSC efficiency doesn’t lower with rising temperatures, rather it increases. Silicon-based photovoltaics produce less power as they heat up.

The cells are first being deployed in remote sensors. Devices like wireless temperature sensors and motion detectors. “We do have clients, many of which we are developing demonstration units with us or going through an evaluation process with us,” Horgan explained.

Since SolarPritnt’s DSSCs are literally printed on surfaces SolarPrint’s cells could be seamlessly integrated into laptops and cellphones in the future. The company also envisions its solar cells for building-integrated photovoltaic applications.

At this point the company is in the testing its products with customers, said Horgan. “We have already begun small scale production and we are shipping test samples to customers presently. We are targeting 2012 to go into high volume production,” he said.

Image courtesy of SolarPrint