John Fitzgerald Weaver for Electrek:  Heliatek installed the ‘world’s largest building integrated organic photovoltaic’ (BIOPV) system on top of a school in La Rochelle, France. 22kW of their ‘HeliaSol’ product was installed in one day by six people.

The ultra-environmentalist solar installation is seemingly 7-8% efficient, weighs 1/10th the weight of a standard solar panel and is held to the roof via an adhesive sticker on the backside of the panel.

Heliatek touts HeliaSol’s benefits due to it’s environmentally friendly ease of manufacturing. When producing the product: no clean room is required, very little energy is consumed, no extreme temperatures are needed, no toxic materials are used, and minimal use of raw materials are actually consumed. The resulting product is cheap, with almost infinitely available material needs and needs no expensive recycling processes through end of life.

“The small molecules of Heliatek are simply thermally evaporated onto the substrate in contrast to other OPV technologies utilizing large molecules (polymers), which require complex solvents and various printing processes. Very precise laser patterning allows optimal use of the available surface.”    Full Article: