IBM, Harvard Use Distributed Computing to Make Ultra-Powerful Solar Cells

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

solar

Researchers at IBM and Harvard are using the power of community to create cheap, efficient solar cells. The  Clean Energy Project will use small amounts of computing power from volunteers— like in the SETI project— to run calculations on compounds in the hopes of finding a combination of organic materials that can be used to make cheap, flexible plastic solar cells.

Technology resulting from the experiment could be used to make solar windows, line blankets, and backpacks.

The solar power project will use IBM’s World Community Grid— a large network of volunteer computers with calculating capabilities that rank it as one of the top ten supercomputers in the world. IBM’s number-crunching Grid software runs in the background of volunteer computers as a screensaver. The program will process over 1 million configurations of atoms in the next two years.

According to IBM and Harvard scientists, the cloud-computing experiment will cut the time necessary to run the solar power calculations by 20 years. With potentially game-changing results, perhaps it will inspire other scientific endeavors to harness people-power.

Photo Credit: NREL


Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.

CleanTechnica Holiday Wish Book

Holiday Wish Book Cover

Click to download.


Our Latest EVObsession Video


I don't like paywalls. You don't like paywalls. Who likes paywalls? Here at CleanTechnica, we implemented a limited paywall for a while, but it always felt wrong — and it was always tough to decide what we should put behind there. In theory, your most exclusive and best content goes behind a paywall. But then fewer people read it!! So, we've decided to completely nix paywalls here at CleanTechnica. But...
 
Like other media companies, we need reader support! If you support us, please chip in a bit monthly to help our team write, edit, and publish 15 cleantech stories a day!
 
Thank you!

Advertisement
 
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.

4 thoughts on “IBM, Harvard Use Distributed Computing to Make Ultra-Powerful Solar Cells

  • Would be nice to have a link on how to join the project. After installing Boinc, I could not find the solar project in the list of projects.

  • Would be nice to have a link on how to join the project. After installing Boinc, I could not find the solar project in the list of projects.

  • Just see how much solar sheats where sell for?

    Thank you,

    Justin Smith

  • Just see how much solar sheats where sell for?

    Thank you,

    Justin Smith

Comments are closed.