I have wondered so many times why don’t they invent a window that shades you and at the same time use that light to do something (instead of heating the glass) – i.e. charge a car’s battery.
Many other invention-intuitive people have thought of that, but New Energy Technologies Inc developed an organic solar array that is both transparent and produces electricity. They made use of conductive polymers, a thousand times thinner than human hair, assembled them together, and – voili ! Here’s a working solar cell less then 1/4 the size of a grain of rice, producing electricity just like its big silicon brother, only cheaper.
Silicon solar cells are expensive at the moment. They break off easily, and they’re not very flexible, making a pretty bad choice for applications where they would provide the most help – mobile electricity production.
NET’s ultra-small organic solar cells are made on a polymer substrate, while standard silicon solar cells are made on stainless steel – you can see the difference. These transparent cells are suited for all kinds of lighting, including the office fluorescent one (possibly recovering some of the energy).
Even more than its flexible and transparent nature, the SolarWindow cells are made of natural polymers, being able to be dissolved into liquid for an easy application. They don’t require high temperature or high vacuum production techniques, like classic silicon solar cells do.
It’s nice to hear windows will be producing electricity – on the other (funny) hand, you’ll see more and more clean windows in the future. I can hardly wait for this invention to become mainstream technology… in a few years, maybe.
This is such a good invention, possibly groundbreaking due to the design and simpleness. If you just think about how many windows you have on your house, and how many your neighbours have, and you are already looking at an amount whereby you would be producing a good amount of energy. If and when these start getting installed, we will live in a better world!
Any idea when this miracle solar polymer will be available to the general public. I’ve heard of similar ideas in the past, and lots of folks have made like things work in the laboratory, I’m just wondering if we’ll ever see them on the market.