Solar 'cloth' turns rooftops into batteries

A flexible photovoltaic fabric, which can even be used as yacht sails to harvest the sun's rays, is finally ready after 10 years of development.

While traditional solar panels weigh between 16kg to 20kg per square meter,
the cloth is just 2kg per sq m.

A new flexible solar “cloth” could soon be coming to a roof near you.The Solar Cloth Company is seeking investors to help its lightweight photovoltaic material that can be used on any surface – or even as sails on a yacht – to harvest the sun’s rays.

While traditional solar panels weigh between 16kg to 20kg per square metre, this cloth is just 2kg per sq m. The material can be draped over car parks and will bond to the contours of “wavy, beautiful architecture”, said SCC’s founder, Perry Carroll, who has been working on the technology since 2004. So far, it has attracted £557,000 from 82 investors on the crowdfunding platform Crowdcube, for a 10pc stake.

The solar sail will be on the market next year, but the cloth also has some surprising niche applications. 

“I made a pair of solar underpants for a Japanese businessman,” says Mr Carroll. “He gave them to his boss with the note, 'I told you the sun shone out of my backside’.” 

There are 800m square meters of lightweight roofing in the UK, plus thousands of car parks that could be fitted cloth roofs. 

“We could power the National Grid three times over,” Mr Carroll claimed. He has signed contracts with 15 local authorities, four UK transport hubs, and two major retailers, generating a revenue pipeline of £65m.