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New Technology Turns Windows Into Solar Panels
An anonymous reader writes "A start-up in Northern California is working on creating 'solar windows' that could act as solar panels at the same time as blocking sunlight from entering office buildings to reduce their energy needs."
Linux has been doing that for years. Microsoft rips off open source, yet again ...
This would be useful for a window that has the sun shining directly into it during the morning or afternoon; you only need so much light coming in!
Why restrict this to office buildings?
Surface area. Most (if not all) homes lack the sq.ft. of glazing required to make a transparent PV array viable.
We like having nice views here in Arizona, but large windows are very bad for the temperature of the structure. If one could reclaim some of the cost of the air conditioning with solar power then it's more practical to have large picture windows.
I for one would like to see this integrated into automobile glass, with it powering a combination battery-monitoring and air circulation system. It could be used to reduce the interior temperature of a car by cycling out the hot air with less-hot air from outside while the car sits out in the sun all day. It would make it less bad when getting in and would possibly prolong the life of the interior components. One could even make a combination solar panel and LCD crystal windows, such that the operator can park, turn on the fan, and then whiteout the windows so that even less light makes it inside.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Here I thought windows that "block sunlight" were called walls.
I've only been hearing about this for, what, about 30 years. I imagine cost is the crucial factor, as otherwise some of those other startups would be ubiquitous now.
Even in this case, the article says "CEO Fink wouldn't reveal his system's cost per watt ," so I bet cost is still a factor.
Yes, and solar is already incredibly worthless without having to steal only "some" of the light, while letting the rest through, and being transparent (or at least semi-transparent), and not being 4-inch-thick, and providing access to the conductor to carry the electricity away, in a glass panel tested to all the relevant standards, on a couple of hundred square meters on the side of a building in a city (which won't be in direct sunlight for quite a lot of the time, unless it's the tallest building around for quite a long distance because of shadows!), with technology that's been suggested and abandoned a dozen times before but never successfully implemented, not to mention the COST of installing all that solar (presumably at design, because retro-fitting will be a bit of a nightmare) for exactly how much gain? A handful of kilowatt-hours every day (which you could save just by cutting out a couple of windows and replacing with a better insulator) assuming even the most efficient panels in use today. It will cost more to run the lifts to move that glass into place and in copper to wire them up than it will ever generate in its usable lifetime... same old solar story as always.
A quick Google search turns up results from at least as far back as 2007 and one article (apparently offline) from 2004.
I guess the new product will be more efficient, but this is definitely nothing new.
That's one purpose of a window. Thanks to modern building techniques, we have the option to create much larger openings in the facade, and thus you get your typical glass and steel skyscraper. Ever notice that they all have a reflective, metallic tint to them? This is to keep much of the light out, because in a large office building, your interior temperature suffers heavily from the amount of light let in. You also have an issue with glare, which tinting can help with as well. If your solar system reduces the amount of solar gain and the amount of light into the building while still allowing some light/vision/heat in, you can forgo the window tinting, and make the windows even more useful.
It will eventually be a common technique when building homes. At some point in the future you will have solar shingles, solar windows, in wall solar panels with light redirected from above to make use of the dead space and possibly even solar paint (depending on house style) that all feed into the same generation system. Unfortunately it isn't viable today and all of those technologies have to be developed to be separately viable before they can be combined into some sort of piecemeal home unit that generated/collected enough energy to make a difference. The place you start with the glass materias would obviously be the giant glass buildings all around us, AKA office buildings.
I'd be happy if we had a solar charger that worked well enough to charge my iPhone. :/ Tried a couple different brands and they were all awful.
One day...
and it's my opinion that the biggest barrier to solar panel adoption in the United States right now are homeowner associations. My worthless HOA forbids solar panels. (Sadly, it is legal for them to do so under state law.. for now, Texas is trying to strip HOAs of that power)
From the article:
"The company Pythagoras Solar is based in San Mateo, California, "
It's the same company.
You can use passive heating and cooling in the design of a structure and do without HVAC for most of the year. Bottom line is architecture and society's whim is responsible for selling inefficient systems to the public, the public is guilty of being dumb/ignorant, and the oil industry sells the stupid people what they want for 2000% over their cost and get stinking filthy rich and powerful. Who's to blame? Nearly everyone!
They aren't dieing. See that's the problem when you have a 2 second attention span. Most of these inventions are being incorporated into viable production lines. From discovery to production is at least 5 years and that's if they already have a factory in place that can utilize the new technology. If they have to build the factory as well it's another 2-3 years. So when you hear about one of these great new ideas do you check back on it in 8 years? Didn't think so.
Bulk solar power is on our door step, otherwise GE wouldn't have just bought one of the most important thin-film solar producers, coincidentally the company in question was already building the largest solar cell production plant in the world. The CdTe panels that this company produces use little of the very expensive rare earths that the other panels do, they can be produced on roll-roll processes (flexible panels as well) and it's expected that they can be produced for significantly less than a $1 a watt (considered the break point for mass acceptance).
Yep imagine that your house's roof let some light in, just enough that you'd never have to turn lights on until sunset, even in the innermost rooms. You could have 90% of the light turned into electricity and the rest used to light your home during the day.
And no you wouldn't need to worry about aerial spying, your roof would look like what car guys call "slut-black tint."
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You can use taxes and subsidies as a way to incorporate hidden costs into a product. For instance, using a coal power plant to generate electricity may be cheap, but only by using current coal price, and ignoring some of the environmental/health damage it does. If you know prices are going to rise in the next 25 years, and you know that the solar panels have a similar lifespan, it's only fair to make some adjustments.
Of course, hidden costs must also be incorporated for solar technology whenever they apply.
You've obviously never designed air conditioning or lighting for a commercial office building with a lot of glass:
Windows are often designed with overhangs above to block direct sunlight, adjustable blonds to allow occupants to reduce bright light and glare, and reflective and absorbent coatings to reduce the light and heat transmission.
You can block most of the sunlight and still get more light from the window than from the electrical lighting (within 15 to 30 ft of the window).
In most climates, the cost of air conditioning due to the sun shining on windows is greater than the cost of lighting and heating those spaces.
adjustable blonds
Go on..tell us more...