Slashdot Mirror
UCLA Develops Transparent, Electricity-Generating, Solar Cell Windows
Elliot Chang writes "A team from UCLA has developed a new transparent solar cell that has the ability to generate electricity while still allowing people to see outside. In short, they've created a solar power-generating window! Described as 'a new kind of polymer solar cell (PSC)' that produces energy by absorbing mainly infrared light instead of traditional visible light, the photoactive plastic cell is nearly 70% transparent to the human eye — so you can look through it like a traditional window."
so, like about as transparent as your shower door with some soap scum on it? 30% obfuscation seems like a lot...
Want to sound like a fourth grader shilling their science project? Use exclamation marks in your summary.
Disclosure: I am not an investor or employee.
The company XSUNX has been doing this for a few years with Copper Indium Gallium Diselenide (as a competitor to Silicon and which theoretically is supposed to be better for the environment), generating thin film solar power that you can see through. Their first generation was a smoky amber glass with slight distortion; their current generation film is more like a tinted window.
I could use some for my Prius...
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
So I'm not interested.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
Don't worry, Some politicians will request a new stimulus package because throwing money in the air has worked so well so far. We will end up funding those Chinese with money we borrowed from them in the process _again_.
produces energy by absorbing mainly infrared light instead of traditional visible light
Unclear how much energy you get in exchange for adsorbing 30% of the visible light and probably all the IR. However, if its a lot of light, it might be worthwhile to dip old fashioned incandescent bulbs into this goo. Rather optimistically, if it can generate more than 40% of the nameplate wattage by adsorbing all the IR and 30% of the visible, then you'd get ahead by recycling that power back into the grid. Not a perpetual motion machine, because 70% of the visible is still leaking out the lampshade, but it would be like the world's weirdest phosphor basically eating IR photons and emitting visible photons.
This does bring up the interesting point for unshaded windows, if it eats 30% of visible light, that merely means you need 30% more ultra-low-R value window area, or 30% more lightbulbs inside to brighten the room back up. So its not going to work well for windows in rooms where the drapes are always open and people are always inside. Great idea for my garage or bedroom (why do those have windows, anyway?) terrible idea for my office / kitchen / living room. Solar panel covered shutters seem like a good idea for the garage and bedroom... if the panels are rockin don't come a knockin or whatever.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
It is impractical because the cost to manufacture the solar cell is much mroe expensive than the energy it will create over the lifetime of the cell. (*assuming it is like every other solar product.)
It WILL work when the cost of the solar cell goes down; or when the cost of every other source of energy rises.
So you could install these in your car, and keep your battery topped up at all times, *and* have tinted windows...
If these are as cheap as they say they are, then even if they aren't very efficient, it could be worth installing them on suitable windows, especially in offices.
But until they can put figures to efficiency and cost, it's just self-promotion using a promise of something, rather than the thing itself. Tell me when I can buy a 10m roll of "70% Transparent Energy Film" that I can cut to shape and install.
This is impractical and will never work.
Do you know what's even more plentiful and cheaper than fossil fuels? Poor people. We should be burning them instead.
If this stuff could be further developed so that you would be able to turn it on and off like smart glass it would be a good alternative of shades, generating electricity from excess light. Trying to only convert IR light is a clever idea, but the electricity you get from that isn't much, you are much better off putting a panel on the roof.
So if I replaced a section of optical fiber with this stuff, it would look on the OTDR like the worlds most uninteresting little bump (oh look, sloppy winding in the splice case results in a minor bump, eh who cares) and I could detect the electrical field... Sounds like a optical tap design.
Of course a beam splitter would probably be a lot simpler, but supposedly there does not exist a beamsplitter design that doesn't inherently create what amounts to multipath that "looks like a beamsplitter" on a OTDR so simply doing something weird when you're tapping might help avoid detection.
The only undetectable optical tap I can think of is chilled-PMT based... I think that would be fairly undetectable if done right.
I haven't directly hands on done fiber since early 90s so I'm not sure. Probably fiber work is much like IT and CS, there is nothing new, just recycled old ideas along a baseline of slowly increasing speeds.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
"Our new PSCs are made from plastic-like materials and are lightweight and flexible," he said. "More importantly, they can be produced in high volume at low cost."
Of course, I'll believe that when I see the bill. However, if it works as they say about the only downside is that you won't get as much heat during cold winters through the windows. That's actually about it. Oh yeah, and they are polymers so they may require oil to be produced (maybe, not sure and don't care enough to find out). Maybe some Slashdoter could get worked up about that or something.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Same old bullshit about the cost to manufacture solar cells... No, it doesn't cost more to manufacture than you get back over the lifetime of the cell. And that's before you consider that the cell should last 25 years (and probably a lot longer) and the cost of electricity in 25 years may be following rather sharper price curves than you'd like.
If it is absorbing mostly on the infrared spectrum, I bet it would help keep your house pretty cool on those hot sunny days.
Common Sense isn't as Common as people think...
If it could have used UV instead of infrared, we could have energy-generating sunscreen!
When first shown such a window, aren't we all going to say " I see what you did there" ?
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
The key issue with solar has always been price. It seems forever on the cusp of having a positive ROI, but it never actually breaks through. Hopefully the use of plastic as opposed to crystals will bring the cost way down.
Protect your browser with the Force Safe Search add-on
I saw something similar at some lame environmentalist convention I was forced to attend a few years ago...
Way to claim you innovated something when you really didn't!
Depending on the efficiency, it might be an interesting choice for something like one (North or South) side of a large glass building, effectively giving you a large solar array for windows that you were going to put in anyway.
Another breakthrough is the transparent conductor made of a mixture of silver nanowire and titanium dioxide nanoparticles
Sounds nifty, but I'm still holding out for transparent aluminum. :-)
Koans and fables for the software engineer
"With this combination, 4% power-conversion efficiency for solution-processed and visibly transparent polymer solar cells has been achieved."
Okaay...
Whee.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
If it absorbs heat (IR) and turns it into energy, it's not a Photo-voltaic device, it's a thermo-couple.
Absorbing IR light instead of visible light doesn't turn it into a thermo-coupled device. The article says "photoactive plastic cell" so it's clearly a photo-voltaic device.
Blocking UV would have some benefits as well.
I seem to recall IR it is blocking is also a major part of heat transference. There could be some definite savings on cooling bills throughout the sun belt/southwest.
Anybody else reminded of the Heinlein stories where Solar panels took off when they started generating energy from the full range of cosmic radiation bombarding the Earth? Led to commuter roads in "The Roads must roll".
In fact, the data that I've seen shows that one type of solar cell (CIGS) can actually *increase* in power output over time. Unlike with silicon cells, where there's a small (usually tapering off) loss over time, the "damage" from ionizing radiation can help remove defects in CIGS cells, functioning as a slow annealing stage.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Solar's getting cheap as hell these days. I've seen residential solar panels at $0.82 a watt
YOU ARE MOM?
I got here through a series of tubes
We'll just make a heat reservoir and hook it up to a heat pump that pumps in heat from outside with a COP of well-greater-than-1, and we'll surround the reservoir in highly efficient IR-absorbing panels, which will capture almost all of the energy, driving the heat pump and yielding energy to spare. Perpetual motion! Take that, laws of physics!
Whether you're dealing with a physical "engine" or not, Carnot must be obeyed, because if he's not, a high-COP heat pump can pump in more heat against the gradient than is needed to generate the power. So obviously there's going to be real limits on waste heat energy recovery using solar panels to absorb infrared, just like waste heat recovery using any mechanism.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Two things:
1 skylight. Now get the efficiency of a roof top solar panel... with electricity.
2. Blocking IR is huge for windows. We have a few south facing windows with no shade... just blocking IR through them would be huge (I have thoiught of it before too). Especially in the summer, every unit of energy that I don't have to extract and remove with the AC units is money saved.
Anything on top of that, even a little extra electricity (maybe enough to operate the blinds?) is gravy.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
One costs $20k, the other (hopefully) costs $2k. Problem with window coatings is that you tend to get windows replaced every so often, so you might not get the long-life of the rooftop mounted solution. Nothing stopping you mounting this on your roof instead.
You'll still be able to clearly see out of the windows with this solution, you wouldn't notice the tinting unless you have an uncoated window nearby, and it apparently doesn't blur/diffuse incoming light.
I'm a supporter of efforts like the development of these windows. The biggest difference in this world between the haves and the have nots is access to affordable energy. If you get that, you get clean water, refrigeration, air conditioning, transportation, etc.
This is why I am in favor of technology developments that focus on energy generation. I'm against using state power to artificially drive conservation because most of the time that really means making access to energy more expensive. The end result of that sort of conservation means that only rich people will have access to energy and the gaps between rich and poor will get wider. No thanks.
They're being saved for Soylent Green...
There's solar equipment to power houses that will provide a return on the investment on current power prices in 5-10 years, like expensive 10k+ units.
These are from profit companies, if they were not profitable, they would not be in business.
Based on economics, this implies that solar cells do actually generate more power than they consume over the lifetime of the cell.
Not all cells or technologies right now naturally, but your generalization cannot be applied to all forms of solar technology.
I've seen residential solar panels at $0.82 a watt
What does that even mean?
$0.82 per watt generated, over its lifetime? per year? Fixed price per peak Watt-hour at time of purchase?
$820 to get a 1kWp solar array sounds cheap, and you need all the equipment to connect the panels to your home supply, etc. In the UK the prices are (from one website I've just Googled and found): "A 2kWp to 4kWp Home Solar system will cost between £5,000 and £8,000 depending on system size; however, through tax free Feed-in Tariff earnings of up to £900 each year, this can be recovered within 10 years."
3. Twenty story buildings generally have more glass space than roof space.
4. You could put 20% efficient panels on your roof, put 4% efficient film on your windows, or both.
As far as being profitable, does that include the impact of government subsidies (e.g., tax credits)?
JOIN US FOR PONG!
I was talking about peak watt output
The really sad part about these is that they are made entirely out of fossil fuels. Not really.
I got here through a series of tubes
Because you just turned little Timmy's baseball mishap into a much more expensive repair. Five of the ten years you need to recoup your costs, tweaker Billy breaks your window to steal your stuff. Window washer Joe uses a dirty rag to clean your window and leaves it hazy/scratched. There are many reasons it would be less-than-practical. Unless it is as cheap as window tinting and/or included in every window made, the cost risk almost certainly exceeds the value of the energy harvested.
No, that chain runs too deep ;)
But, if using renewable energy such as solar technology to power processes to create solar technology...then?
Depends on the return on investment. Even if the return is positive, there may be more efficient ways to deploy that capital. At least until the technology matures enough to become competitive with alternatives. Of course, the glut of natural gas is pushing that point into the future right now.
JOIN US FOR PONG!
Attaboy! We don't need no commie wimpy treehuggin potsmokin eurotrash abortionist lesbian solar windows. We can get all the energy we need from burning tires!
They're even renewable!
Solar is already available and affordable for many uses. I expect a calculator (If I ever own a dedicated unit again) to run off of solar power. Solar yard lighting is also heavily used because it is widely available and affordable. Solar for road signs in remote areas, and emergency call boxes are also the norm.
30 years ago, photovoltaic panels were an oddity. Your average person never saw them. Today, they are everywhere. You can't walk through a Walmart without seeing them all over the place for sale.
Similar work is being done at MIT.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/transparent-solar-windows-0415.html
For the folks wondering what 70% transparent windows look like, I think the small glass pictured in that article is 65% transparent. Certainly good enough for ambient lighting in an office.
The reduced heat in the winter is probably offset by the reduced heat in the summer (for those using AC), but...
You will also have 30% less light coming through your windows. It's going to get dark inside your house earlier in the evening, requiring you to turn on lights.
Using a transparent (or even opaque) film on the siding makes a lot more sense to me.
Why is it that every time a story is posted about a new solar technology, someone replies to say, "We keep hearing about new solar technologies, but they won't make it onto the market for years." Wrong! All these new solar technologies you keep hearing about are making it onto the market. That's one of the reasons solar prices have been dropping like a rock in recent years.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
Why burn them when you can hook them up to a machine running an earth-like simulation?
This is much more interesting for commercial building use than for the home. At home, you're better off shading your windows and just using less AC. Once you get above tree height the math goes the other way. Cover as much of the facade as possible, including vision glass, with photovoltaics. They're already using both transparent and non-transparent photovoltaic on tall building facades.
Especially if you'd be tinting the windows anyway. If you can make this stuff for not much more than regular window tinting, then it might end up way ahead of photovoltaics on the roof.
The questions would be (i) how much more expensive than regular tinting, (ii) how much more/less heat ends up in the building versus tinting (this stuff may be more efficient or less efficient at keeping summer heat out of the building than straight tinting) and (ii) what's the cost of the additional wiring you'd need (as you wouldn't wire it directly into the building distribution, you'd at least have it on the other side of circuit breakers from the loads). You could potentially build wiring right into the mullions, though. That could make wiring pretty cost effective.
There was actually a recent episode of the Straight Dope podcast (which is just reading the weekly column) that covered this. It was a followup to a recent episode that doesn't seem to be available in the feed anymore..
The main feed is:
http://straightdope.infoble.com/rss.xml
Followup: How much energy is wasted hauling around U.S. body fat? 4/28/12
I think you're overselling how often windows in a house get broken. I haven't had a window break in any house I've lived in for at least 10, if not 20 years. Not to mention, these are plastic, so they are probably harder to break than glass.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
Vivoleum is in the works, complete with commemorative candles.
I'm not sure if the summary has been changed since you posted, but here is what I currently see:
I count a single exclamation mark in the summary. I also only a see a grand total of one exclamation in any of the linked articles (this paragraph is copied verbatim in the summary). Assuming the summary hasn't changed, I have no idea why you were modded +5 Insightful (at the time of this post) for a trivial, and overall worthless complaint that really adds nothing of value to the discussion.
However, if the summary has been edited, then I apologize for my rudeness.
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
Off the top of my head, I can think of a few reasons this won't work in my house during the summer, when the sun is most plentiful and we have the least amount of overcast days where I live:
When you recognize love in another and realize how precious it is, everything else seems so insignificant.
It's really not that complicated. If it's cheap enough, and produces enough power, it will be useful for some people, but will probably not replace Grid Power (though it may help reduce consumption of Grid power, which is generally a win). For other people, because of their circumstances, it will not be so useful.
Therein lies the great, simple truth that most advocates on both sides of the argument ignore.
Solar power (and wind power) isn't a 100% solution for our national energy needs. That doesn't mean it can't play a useful role in reducing use of gas, coal, oil/diesel.
As an example, I live in an apartment. I have east facing, large windows which would be a great place to install some thin-film PV. However, I would only do that if the price wasn't so high that I can't recover the costs in about a year or two or three, because I might not be living in this apartment next year. I might be able to sell the PV to the next occupant of the apartment, or to some other person, even if I can't fully recover the costs through my own use.
But, best case scenario, I reduce my monthly power bills by maybe a few percent during the spring and fall months. I imagine if the film produces a pretty good amount of power, I would be able to run my computer, monitor, and speakers off the power it generates, charge my mobile phone, and perhaps run a ham radio from it.
I'm probably not going to run the fridge, AC, or apartment lighting from it.
Oh not this bullshit again. That was for space-grade solar panels as used on satellites, not all solar cells.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Okay then explain this image where triple-paned windows in buildings are leaking heat like a sieve:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Passivhaus_thermogram_gedaemmt_ungedaemmt.png
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
True, I haven't seen children playing like they used to, particularly in urban and suburban areas for at least 15-20 years. When I was a kid we played outside a lot, in spite of my interest in computers and early hobby programming, and I'd estimate that 2-4 windows were lost to mishaps on my street every year. That doesn't count criminal activity, which breaks quite a few.
Plastic is still easier to scratch.
This makes perfect sense.
Where I live (top floor of a condo tower), there's not much that ever touches the outside of my windows. Even inside there's not much that could fall and break one. The biggest issue is birds running into them, which happens far more often than you might imagine.
From the units posted on the graph, the windows in the Passivhaus are emitting radiation consistent with a 1-2C increase in temperature (or, rather, the difference between 37/39.2F and 41F), while those for the traditional structure are consistent with a ~4C increase in temperature (or, rather, the difference between 37/39.2F and 46F). (Compared to double-pane, low-E, R-3 (U-factor 0.3) windows, triple-pane windows (typically R-5/U-factor 0.2) can reduce average heat loss through the window by more than 30 percent, when compared to R-3 windows in residential buildings situated in northern climate zones.) To say that the windows in the Passivhaus are leaking heat like a sieve is specious.
wouldn't that be fossil fuel that's not being released into the atmosphere, but rather captured and stored as a solar cell? seems like a good idea to me.
We should be burning them instead.
We are
I wonder if we can make a window that absorbs bomb blasts (In some places there's more of that than sunlight.) and generates electricity.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
"Electricity-generating solar cell windows"?
As opposed to solar cells that that generate, say, xenon and mummy dust?
The Wolfpack Project: BitCoin + Crowdfunding = Political Accountability
I more referring to the fact that should these actually be manufactured using fossil fuels that it would kind of obviate them as a replacement for them since the simple construction of them would be counterproductive to the whole "not using fossil fuels" line of solar power. Thanks for ruining it Professor Killjoke.
I got here through a series of tubes
That was actually butt-obvious from the context already (especially to anyone who has spent more than three seconds ever checking out solar panel pricing). IMHO you didn't really need to clarify that, just to satisfy some pedantic egotist trying to demonstrate their superiority by pretending your use of units was confusing to anyone 'clued up'.
If the window is generating electricity and the window will vibrate slightly from the sound waves in the room, will such vibrations change the efficiency slightly causing the audio to be in the power output?!
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone