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Army Tents
Become Solar Power Field Equipment
U.S. Army tents could
soon provide troops with more than shade.
Image: Iowa Thin Film
"Successfully integrating
PowerFilm flexible solar panels with fabric is a major
milestone for fabric-based building integrated solar
products for both military and commercial uses."
- Mike Coon, Chief Operating Officer of Iowa Thin Film
Technologies
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Ames, Iowa - June 21,2004 [SolarAcces.com]
Fabric for Army tents could become more than just protection
from the sun. Iowa Thin Film Technologies has completed the
development of integrated solar technology for three tent prototypes
using the company's PowerFilm flexible solar panels directly
with the tent fabric.
"Iowa Thin Film Technologies developed a new fabric integrated
solar technology for field shelters that will advance the Army's
goal of reducing dependence on fuel-fired power generation and
reducing logistics footprint," Jean Hampel said.
Hampel is the project engineer of the Fabric Structures Group
in the U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center in Natick Massachusetts.
The project began with the Army's growing demand for portable
and remote power. Funding for the project came from the Small
Business Innovation Research program. Hampel searched for commercially
available solar technology that had high potential for developing
tents with built-in solar power generation.
Iowa Thin Film Technologies worked with the Soldier Center,
and with Eureka, which is a division of Johnson Outdoors. FTL
Design Engineering Studio, a tensile structure design and engineering
firm, worked with the fabric of the tent prototypes.
"The development of these prototypes solved a number of technical
problems, to significantly increase our manufacturing throughput
for fabric integrated solar products," said Frank Jeffrey, President
of Iowa Thin Film Technologies.
Models of the tent prototypes are a quadrant, a temper fly and
a power shade field shelter. Quadrant tents are designed to
go over the top of existing tents, and the temper fly is a modification
of a standard Army tent design. The power shade, using a mesh
fabric, can be used over an existing tent or as a stand-alone
structure.
Power output from the tents ranges from approximately 200 W
to one kW. Several tents can be joined together for additional
power. Power generated by the tents is stored in a bank of batteries,
and used for a variety of purposes from lighting and ventilation
to GPS and radio systems. Satellite phones and laptop computers
can also be charged with the electricity stored in the batteries.
"Successfully integrating PowerFilm flexible solar panels with
fabric is a major milestone for fabric-based building integrated
solar products for both military and commercial uses," said
Mike Coon, Chief Operating Officer of Iowa Thin Film Technologies.
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Increasing
PV Funding Through Education and Awareness by Clayton Handleman
In spite of our recent strides, the solar and renewable
industry is still in its infancy. Poised to grow by
orders of magnitude in less than a generation, it
is important that, as an industry, we take a longterm
approach to how we build our markets. Production costs
drop as production volume increases. ...continued.
