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Clear Solar Panels Double As Projection Screens
EnergyEfficient writes "Metropolis Magazine has an article about a company that is producing transparent solar panels. The panels 'can generate 3.8 watts of electricity per square foot, an above-average level of efficiency.' They come in a thick version that can be used for glazing buildings. Imagine if all those glass skyscrapers could also produce power! As an interesting aside, they can also be used as screens for projection TV units."
There are lots of interesting things that could be done to produce more ecologically friendly buildings.
The first is simply to make more efficient use of natural light! I stayed for a week in a new residence building at The University of East Anglia (Norwich, UK) and the building really intrigued me. It had hollow lighting columns running up to the top of the building, despite being a rather tall apartment. So there was natural light from the top reaching all floors. That definitely saves lighting costs.
So with approaches like that (using natural light as much as you can) coupled with clear solar panels, you could both use natural lighting and collect power for electrical lighting later on. Improve actual lighting with high-efficiency (85% +) white LEDs (last forever) or high efficiency fluorescents, and you've got one amazing power-efficient building.
The problem is that these supplies -- solar panels, white LEDs have large initial costs. As these costs come down we'll see lots of nice new interiors. I can only expect such things to become more common as people actually realized they're screwed for cheap power.
The evaluation requires multiple points before you can determine worth:
... $500/year
... $500/year ... that net meaning that it paid for the energy lost through it and had dividend above that mark (ok, so extremely drastic)
... that ecological costing is actually fairly complex and is why the public often doesn't "get it". Maybe we need to go to the utility model for things such as this as well. That is only partial sarcasm, BTW, it could actually make a lot of sense to figure out a model whereby such things could be scaled out over time so that the initial aquisition was not prohibitive.
1) How much does it cost to produce a square foot of this solar panel?
2) Same question as #1 for the glass that would be used normally?
3) How much energy will this solar panel -leak- over the expected life span of the installation?
4) Same as #3 for regular glass?
5) What is the energy gained by the solar collection process?
6) After all factors considered, is the cost of the solar panel compared to regular glass over the lifespan of both higher (bad) or lower (good)?
Illustration (all assumptions):
* Assume the installation has an expected life span of 10 years (I would hope the lifespan of skyscraper glass would be more like 40-50 years or more, but that is a pain to calculate).
* Assume that the glass installation costs $1,000 (we're talking a big piece of skyscraper glass here, ok?)
* Assume solar panel costs 10x the normal glass installation, $10,000
* Assume that each year the regular glass will cost 1/2 again the initial cost in energy loss (probably a pretty drastic assumption but it makes things easy)
* Assume that each year the solar glass will net 1/2 again the initial cost of -regular- glass each year (another drastic assumption)
Factored together, after 10 years the regular glass net cost was $6,000 whereas the solar glass net cost was $5,000 (and also helped subsidize the cost, making future installations less costly).
Of course, being assumptions you could easily make an example where the reverse was true and the solar glass was more expensive over 10 years (again, hoping that 10 years is a small chunk of the real installation).
My point is pretty small for all of the above
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
$19 million, plus the cost of the mountings, and whatever system they use to wire together the glass and harvest the electricity.
On an unrelated note, the Aon Center (formerly the Amoco/Standard Oil Bldg) in Chicago was originally clad in white marble. Years later, the climate softened the marble and bits of it began to fall off. So they re-clad the entire building with granite in the '90s, which ended up costing them more than the original price of the building. At least the electricity-producing glass could alleviate the utility costs of the building, but who knows how long it would take until the glass ended up paying for itself.
However, if it turned out that the glass turned out to be inferior to normal glass (visibility, thermal properties, etc), then the owners would have to go through the costly process of replacing it with regular glass.
Solar is attractive because it isn't seasonal (unlike hydroelectric, which is only available during a portion of the year and is usually unavailable during the time we need it most, summer)
Kind of the opposite here in Ontario. The length of time the sun is out changes a lot. On June 20th of this year, the sun rose at 5:45am and set at 9:07pm (at my location of course). On December 20th of this year, the sun will rise at 7:52am and set at 4:52pm. The further north you go, the more drastic the changes.
Solar power should work out reasonably well even with those changes in daylight hours because peak electric use is during the summer where the most power is used.
Why is hydroelectric generation seasonal? It's my understanding that most of our hydro is generated using dams. Some is generated on rivers such as the Niagara River. Do your rivers dry up in the summer or something?
While it may be miniscule for a city, would a Sears Tower application, generating 4.2 Megawats, be able to power the building itself? I wonder what the average consumption of the Sears Tower is?
Of the Gigawatt produced by a power plant, how much of it is lost to power transmission? I mean, if these powerplant-esque high rises are closer to the point of consumption, aren't they a tad more efficient than the traditional at-a-distance power plants?
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
At first, I read it as 3.8kW and said, "Hunh? That's more than the Solar Constant, 1.367kW per square meter." Then I reread it and saw that it was simply 3.8W. This sounded much more reasonable... and small.
This means that a 60W light bulb would need almost 16 square feet to function. Well, that of course is a reason to move to compact flourescents or LED light bulbs. But my computer takes up a bit of power. So does a refridgerator. So does a washer/dryer.
Let's say that it is a television. What's the equivalent of a square foot display (asuming a 5:4 ratio)? About 13"? Can a 13" LCD display work with 3.8W of power? (I don't know. That's why I'm asking.)
I'm not questioning whether it can give power. I'm questioning whether it can give sufficient power to offset the price. Or would the money be better spent elsewhere in green technologies to reduce the actual draw from the grid?
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.