The Charge Around Australia project will power a Tesla
electric car with 18 of the team's printed plastic solar panels, each 18 metres
(59 feet) long, rolling them out beside the vehicle to soak up sunlight when it
needs a charge.
Paul Dastoor, the inventor of the printed solar panels, said
the University of Newcastle team would be testing not only the endurance of the
panels but their potential performance for other applications.
"This is actually an ideal test bed to give us
information about how we would go about using and powering technology in other
remote locations, for example, in space," Dastoor told Reuters in the town
of Gosforth, north of Sydney.
Printed solar is a lightweight, laminated PET plastic that
can be made at a cost of less than $10 a square metre.
The panels are made on a commercial printer originally used
for printing wine labels.
Dastoor said using the panels to power a car would get
Australians to think more about electric vehicles and could help ease their
"range anxiety".
"(The) community is seeking these sorts of answers to
the problems it's being presented with, day in, day out, around climate
change," he said.
On their 84-day Tesla journey, the team plans to visit about
70 schools to give students a taste of what the future may hold.
Asked what Elon Musk, creator of the Tesla car and founder
of Tesla, might say about the CAA project, Dastoor said he hoped he would be
pleased.
CAA was "showing how our innovative technology is now
combining with his developments to develop new solutions for the planet",
Dastoor said
Reuters is publishing a series of environmental stories to
mark Earth Day, which falls on April 22. The Earth Day theme for this year is
"Invest In Our Planet". © Reuters
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