Chicago's Willis Tower To Become Vertical Solar Farm

An anonymous reader writes "The tallest building in the United States is set to become a soaring vertical solar farm, as Pythagoras Solar just launched a project to emblazon the building's glass façade with transparent photovoltaic panels. The new windows, dubbed high power density photovoltaic glass units, are a clever hybrid technology that lays a typical monocrystalline silicon solar cell horizontally between two layers of glass to form an individual tile. An internal plastic reflective prism directs angled sunlight onto the solar cells but allows diffuse daylight and horizontal light through. The high-profile project will begin on the south side of the 56th floor and could grow up to 2 MW in size — which is comparable to a 10-acre field of solar panels."

Comments

Re:Sears Tower

[bigsexyjoe]

If anything, it should be called the Wesley Willis Tower, afterthe great Chicagoan Wesley Willis.

Economics

[EmagGeek]

What is the cost, and how long will it take to generate enough power to recover that cost?

Also, how much taxpayer money is being spent on this?

Average hours of sunlight per day in Chi-town?

[sdguero]

According to this solar power website, Chicago only gets an average of 3.14 hours of sunlight per day:
http://www.gosolarcompany.com/pv-sizing-sun-hours.html

Seems like it would be a lot more efficient to put these on a high rise in Phoenix, with an average of 6.58 hours per day of sunlight. Then again, I'm not a marketing guy for Big WIlly, or "journalist" at inhabitat, so what do I know...

Re:How much offset?

[peragrin]

Actually you can thank the buildings designers for that. most skyscrapers suffer from updrafts, that could be strong enough to lift 120 pounds. Think about it, that cute secretary in those awesome heels, walks by the open window and gets sucked out of it because the wind shifts just right. It has happened.