Generating Electricity from Solar Balloon

Balloon is such a common thing that everyone must be familiar with. Material of balloon is of elastic nature that expands to a certain limit when pushed equally from all sides by inside pressurized gas. Pressure inside the balloon can be generated by two methods. Firstly by pushing more air/gas in the balloon as we do when inflate the balloon. Secondly by heating the inside air/gas so that the air/gas molecules occupy more space and hence inflate the balloon. Inflating and playing with balloons is fun for children but scientist came up with a remarkable idea to use these balloons for the production of electricity from sun. A nice idea in this regard is discussed as follows.

This idea is developed by Rob Lamkin and Cool Earth Solar for the production of electricity. They have suspended inflated Solar Balloons in the sky not too much on higher altitude. About 6~8 feet diameter balloon is made in two halves. The top half is made up of transparent polymer, while the bottom half is made up of polished aluminum lined with high efficiency solar PV cells. Sun Light enters from the transparent side and strike on the PV cells, energizes them and resulted in electricity.

It is attractive option because it is much cheaper and the production density is higher than PV panels. Details with numbers is provided in the following video.