Let your windows power your coffee machine
What if our smartphones generated energy instead of just consuming it? A new transparent solar panel is making its way onto the solar technology market. Read More
Richard R. Lunt, Michigan State University/Ubiquitous Energy
What if our smartphones generated energy instead of just consuming it? What if our windows could create enough electricity to power a coffee machine, for example? A number of new energy generating options are arising thanks to a new transparent solar panel making its way onto the solar technology market.
What looks like a normal pane of glass is actually a completely transparent solar panel created by researchers at Michigan State University (MSU). Previous attempts at creating transparent solar cells have all failed for one simple reason: Solar cells absorb sunlight and convert it into electricity, but if the material is transparent, all of the light passes through without generating energy. The darker the solar panels, the better they work – at least that has been the rule so far.
The MSU research team managed to bypass this problem using a “transparent luminescent solar concentrator”: The concentrator selectively harvests the part of the solar spectrum we can’t see with the naked eye, while letting visible light pass through. Organic salts absorb specific non-visible wavelengths of ultraviolet and near infrared wavelengths that then “glow” at another wavelength in the infrared. The “glowing” infrared light is guided to the edge of plastic-like material, where thin strips of photovoltaic cells convert it into electricity.
(c) Ubiquitous Energy 
Ubiquitous Energy recently installed the world’s first transparent solar window façade at its headquarters in California, USA. (c) Ubiquitous Energy
The prototype is “leaving the lab”
Cofounded by the researcher that led the MSU research team Richard Lunt, MIT start-up Ubiquitous Energy is currently bringing the transparent solar panel to market. While the initial prototype developed six years ago only had an efficiency of around 1 per cent – the amount of the solar energy that falls on the panel that is transformed into useable electricity – the transparent solar cells have now achieved 9.8 per cent power conversion efficiency.They can be used on large surfaces without requiring extra space.
While this is far less than the energy produced by common solar panels with an average efficiency rate of 15 to 20 per cent, there is one big advantage to the transparent ones: They can be used on large surfaces without requiring extra space. Just imagine entire skyscrapers could potentially be covered with this thin, energy-producing layer.
To test their concept, Ubiquitous Energy recently installed the world’s first transparent solar window façade at its headquarters in Redwood City, California where approximately 100 square feet of transparent solar windows now provide sustainable energy to the company. The panel also blocks infrared solar heat, improving the energy efficiency of buildings.
