Wing-win situation

Adopting solar panels is one small way of accelerating decarbonisation in the shipping industry. However, while it’s easy to install panels on a flat roof, getting the best out of them onboard vessels with varying geometries is another matter.

On land, you can bolt a solar panel to a roof at a fixed angle or rotate it to follow the sun. On most vessels, the panel is permanently attached to a flat deck or vertical hull. Because the ship is constantly turning, rolling and manoeuvring, the panel’s orientation relative to the sun is at the mercy of the ship’s heading. On-deck container stacks or nearby offshore structures can further block direct sunlight, limiting clean onboard power generation.

“We were looking at applications where solar panels cannot be installed at optimal tilt angle, such as vertical integration on electric vehicles or vessels,” explains Dr Katie Shanks, a researcher at the University of Exeter, UK, who headed up a three-year EPSRC Fellowship project, ‘Invisible’ Solar Technologies from Bio-inspired Optics. “We wanted to evaluate how much energy could be captured to offset onboard auxiliary power demands.”

Running from January 2022 to July 2025 and supported by UK Research and Innovation, the project turned to biomimicry for the solution. The concept originated