Solar panels are significant in the clean energy revolution; yet, they have one major downfall; their productivity falls on a cloudy day. With this in mind, Carvey Ehren Maigue developed a new kind of solar panel that harvests the unseen ultraviolet (UV) light from the sun. UV rays make it through even dense cloud coverage, but conventional solar panels can’t absorb this light. Maigue isn’t letting any of this UV go to waste.
Maigue, an electrical engineering student at Mapua University in the Philippines, won the 2020 James Dyson Sustainability Award for his creation, called AuREUS (Aurora Renewable Energy and UV Sequestration.)
AuREUS uses luminescent particles from vegetable and fruit waste that absorb UV light and converts it into visible light. This visible light is then converted into energy via a solar film. “It’s similar to how we breathe in oxygen, and we exhale carbon dioxide. It takes in ultraviolet light, and then after some time, it would shed it as visible light,” explained Maigue.
The James Dyson Sustainability Award includes a $35,000 prize that will allow Maigue to further develop his idea. He envisions the colorful solar panels being used on large buildings’ windows and walls, turning them into endless energy sources.
Maigue installed his first AuREUS prototype, a single 3-by-2-foot lime green-tinted panel, in his apartment’s window. While demonstrating his test panel for the James Dyson Award, he showed that it could generate enough power to charge two phones per day. That may not seem like a lot, but these panels could allow buildings to run entirely on their own electricity when scaled up.
Furthermore, Maigue claims the material’s flexibility allows designers to use the panels in various, innovative forms, as the resin can be applied to fabric for clothing. The creation could help more people adopt renewable energy solutions.
Maigue said:
If we can democratize renewable energy, we can bring it both physically closer to people as well as psychologically closer. It would give them a sense of access to it, that they are closer to it, that they don’t have to be large institutions that have the capability to harvest solar energy with their rooftops.
Maigue will make his first building installation of AuREUS at a small medical clinic on Jomalig island, off the Phillippine mainland. These solar panels are very much needed at this clinic because the island frequently has storms, leaving the facility without power.
In the James Dyson Foundation video below, Maigue explains why and how he built AuREUS.
