Accatel is now installing 90 Strix OWS nodes for an initial network deployment, to support 10,000 voice subscriber lines in an eight-square-mile area of Chittagong, a port city of Bangladesh, with 3.5 million people.
The power grid there is not as stable as in the United States,” says Nan Chen, vice president of marketing at Strix. “[Solar power] gives them the freedom of choices for installation sites.”
…For decades, solar-cell researchers have tried to develop cheaper alternatives to silicon. The problem has been efficiency: other materials just don’t generate enough electricity. But Siemens’s achievement earlier this year of the highest efficiency to date in plastic solar cells could change that. The Siemens design combined two of the most important advances in materials science in the past 30 years: electrically conducting polymers and buckyballs.
Down the road, researchers hope to boost nano solar cells’ power output and make them even easier to deploy, eventually spraying them directly onto almost any surface. Palo Alto, CA-based startup Nanosolar (below), which has raised $5 million in venture capital, is working on making this idea practical…
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