SUNTEX
Lightweight woven solar textile
weaving, solar fabric, textile architecture, energy harvesting
Weaving solar energy into the world around us
2022
Studio Pauline van Dongen and Tentech are developing an innovative solar textile, under the working title SUNTEX.
This new material combines the flexibility, tactility and design freedom of textile with the energy-generating potential of solar technology. By weaving thin-film organic photovoltaic (OPV) panels into a textile, a smart and lightweight material is made. Research has shown that combining the flexible OPV with yarns of high tensile strength, allows it to be used in tensile architecture, textile shading structures and textile façades which can harvest solar energy while providing passive sun shading.
Photography: Anna Wetzel
SUNTEX façade
Built as a modular system, SUNTEX offers architects formal flexibility that other much heavier and less flexible solar technologies do not. This means that SUNTEX can be applied to places and surfaces with many hours of sunshine that currently remain unused, for example the glass facades of high-rise buildings. A speculative design study on the Westraven building in Utrecht has shown that SUNTEX, installed on three of the four facades, could power the entire lighting of the building year-round. Next to the qualitative benefit of harvesting energy, the aesthetic integration of SUNTEX on buildings can increase social awareness and acceptance of solar energy around us.
SUNTEX demonstrator
The most recent demonstrator of the textile was displayed at The Energy Show, an exhibition curated by Matylda Krzykowski at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, in collaboration with The Solar Biennale.
Special thanks to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy for supporting the development of SUNTEX.
Would you like to apply SUNTEX in your product or industry, send us a message!