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Clear Solar Cells Could Help Windows Generate Power
ckwu writes "The vast real estate of windows in office buildings and skyscrapers could be a fruitful field for harvesting solar energy—if lightweight solar cells could be made with a high enough conversion efficiency and appealing aesthetics. Now researchers at Oxford University report semitransparent solar cells that might do the trick. The team made solar cells using a perovskite, a class of mineral-like materials that have properties similar to inorganic semiconductors and show sunlight-to-electricity conversion efficiencies of more than 15%. The team deposited a thin film of perovskite onto glass so that the material formed tiny crystalline islands. The islands absorb photons and convert them to electrons, while light striking the empty areas passes through. The result was a semitransparent solar cell with a grayish tint."
Get them to contact window companies and government / corporate builders.
The challenges for mass-adoption of solar cells having nothing to do with convenient locations to put them. Nearly all home-owners have a roof that they can access.
The challenges for solar cell adoption are:
Cost-effective manufacturing methods
The market price of silicon
Efficiency of conversion
Storing the energy for when it's required (or moving it to where it is helpful)
and Durability
When those problems are REALLY solved, we won't need to have dark windows to generate our energy needs. And we won't need to burn coal. But we're a long way from solving all of those problems.
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
Will they be available as a service pack for XP ?
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
It seems that no headline or story is written anymore without these weasel words that render the subject matter impotent.
Semi transparent cells could, but don't/won't.
Semi transparent cells might, or might not and probably won't.
Semi transparent cells may, but doesn't.
How about we get some tech that actually does shit. Why can't the next headline read; not so spectacular evolutionary tech does get the job done and improves performance ~5%. It will cost more and then later cost less.
Seriously, unless you can make these absorb energy only in wavelengths we actually don't want in the house, it seems like all we'd be doing is generating electricity, which we'd then burn trying to substitute the light we filtered out. If these capture either IR, or visible light (and they deffinately capture visible light), then we're just going to end up turning on more light bulbs, and heaters to compensate for them.
When has aesthetics ever played a role in how the glass and steel monstrosities were erected? If the owner thought they could make some extra money, they'll be tacked on, no matter how ugly.
Hmmm.. When did I get so cynical?
I'm all for solar windows on buildings. It doesn't bring in that much energy per unit area, but on a large, multi-story building, the energy obtained can be substantial.
This is useful for both on-grid use (to help lower power bills), as well as off-grid use (power to be stored in batteries and used with PSW inverters for very clean power in the structure.)
Stuff like this isn't revolutionary, but with energy use, any step helps.
The first posts here are all skeptical. When we have 3D printing stories we're all three weeks away from Star Trek. Or has 3D hype died down recently?
They already have these in Japan, made ironically by an American (good old USofA) company.
The islands absorb photons and convert them to electrons
Really?
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If I had grey windows, I'd get less heat from open blinds in the Winter. I'd have to burn more gas.
That said, tinted windows on office building are already the norm so it could work in that setting. It all comes down to cost. Also, what kind of innovative code compliance will you need for wiring from every window?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
They would have to be horribly inefficient to allow most of the light through. So much that they would be useless in any installation other than an all glass high rise.
That pesky Laws of Physics getting in the way again.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
From the makers of submarine screen doors
Windows will never generate power, it will always consume power and much more so than a sane OS.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
These are great for homeowners with HOAs that would consider rooftop panels an eye sore and not allow them. The amount of electricity a typical single family home would produce from these probably isn't impressive, but on a massive scale, this could save a lot of dead dinosaurs. For those outside of a country with strict homeowner's associations, there have been legal battles leading to foreclosures about things as silly as what color an owner paints their trim. Yes, most HOAs (in the US anyway) would not allow rooftop solar panels for aesthetic reasons.
They should do it the liberals to piss off the engineer...liberal solar/wind engineering TAKERS!
Like Dubai.
That said, the main barriers are the cost to make PVs, and the storage of the energy itself.
Sunny climates could use the PV windows to generate electricity for cooling buildings, which is up to 40 percent of energy usage in a lot of the world, and even for vehicles to extend their running range, depending on the characteristics of the PV material.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Will the whole room turn blue during the day?
Silicon should be fairly cheap: it makes up about 28% of the earths crust by mass, second only to oxygen. Of course it's rarely pure, but its widely available. I know whenever I go to the beach, I wind up getting silicon dioxide in the car if I don't wipe my feet very well.
These people are actually freeloaders but of course he can't say what they really are because of political correctness that forces him to use softer words like "freeriders".
I don't want sewage electricity being forced down my throat after it's been on some other guy's filthy roof already! I'm an American; I have a right to choose clean electricity!
IN THE BEGINNING God created heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was floating on the surface of the waters. God said "let there be light" and there was light. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness with a thin film of perovskite on glass so that the material formed tiny crystalline islands. The islands absorbed photons and converted them unto electrons, whilst light striking the empty areas passed through. And God saw that it was good. Then God said "let the rooftops sprout with panels: panels bearing light from the heavens"; the ceilings brought forth electricity, freeriders yielding current with voltage in it, unto the grid. And God saw that it was good. Then to be fair he charged the freeriders $100 per month, which Arizona reduced to $5, for those who drilled the formless void of the earth for the Spirit of God, and have to distribute the unwanted surplus electricity. And God saw that it was good.
Raising code compliance issues when the item has not got as far as a prototype is taking a bit of an end run around reality. Thus I enquired as to why you wish to raise such unfounded fears, uncertainty and doubt.
I'm sick of such luddites that attack new technologies with such FUD when there is obviously no answer yet to the question raised. It's not even at the point where the standards that would be applied can be named let alone having something or a domestic electrician to wire up.
5V? 9V? 12V? 110V? How much current?
No answer yet.
Thus no answer to your deliberately unanswerable FUD question.
In a social situation you would get more subtle ridicule for such an end run around reality but here anything other than a blunt response to such deliberate manipulation seems to be taken as some sort of agreement.
And in case of crashing windows, you can see the blue screen of death.
Bert
Enron (later BP) Solarex pursued what were called Building Integrated PV panels back in the 90's, but abandoned the project (later sold to US Solar I believe).
Solarex was using germane/silane-doped amorphous silicon deposition at the time. TFA doesn't go much into the actual engineering here.
Main concerns, as always in PV, were efficiency and initial cost.
What is new here?
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
If the material Perovskite is as good as they say it is, why limit the application on only the windows ?
We can apply the same thing to walls, to roof, even to pavements, so long as the sunlight can shine on them they get to generate electricity.
Heck, we can apply it on the car windows and car body surfaces as well, and and store the power inside the battery - or use it to run, aka that solar car in the Logan Run's tv series (it was aired in the 1970's, far too old for the young uns to enjoy)
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Power companies lobbying for more obstacles and increased costs to be placed in front of consumers daring to consider panels.
These are thin film solar technology that has less than a 3 year lifespan. they lose nearly 30% of their power output withing 8 months
Could you kindly provide us with citation, please ?
If you can provide us with ways to identify "junk solar panels" from the good ones, it would greatly help all of us to avoid those "junks".
Thank you !
Surely I'm not the only one that did a double take when I read that as "pervo-skite"...
35 Solar
www.35-solar.com