Solar roof panels? That’s so last season, at least according to tech futurist Miles Barr. He wants to take solar generation away from the building and into the realms of popular fashion. Miles wants to make curtains, mobile phone cases, and yes, even shirts that gather and use solar energy.

Miles, who has a chemical engineering Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, specialises in chemical vapour deposition, a process that is used put a thin, solid film around any object inside a sealed chamber.

The advance Miles has made is by adapting the technology to fix an electrically active solar cell coating onto ordinary materials. His first success, in 2010, was imprinting a solar cell onto a sheet of paper.

Once Miles’ team at MIT perfected the process to make solar cells, they attacked an office supply store, grabbing any and all test materials: “Saran Wrap, copy paper, tissue paper, almost anything you can imagine,” he says.

Miles believes his technique would work in mass production, because it uses easily available and prolific organic molecules. The downfall is that at present, his solar cells can only store and convert around 2 per cent energy into electric power, compared with the standard 10 – 20 per cent produced by photovoltaic panels, though he thinks he can eventually raise the efficiency to 10 per cent.

So watch this space, you never know SDS could be bringing a whole new range of solar products in the not too distant future.

For all the latest solar power deals, visit the Solar Direct Savings website or contact our customer service team on 0800 810 0181.