Solar energy from window panes

Earlier this year, New Energy Inc. researchers achieved a major ‘transparency’ breakthrough in the development of our SolarWindow™ technology, capable of generating electricity on see-thru glass.

For the first time ever, scientists successfully developed and integrated transparent, environmentally-friendly compounds onto glass in order to collect the electricity generated on SolarWindow™ -- an important function.  To-date, the collection of electricity was possible only through the use of a metal contact, which blocked visibility and limited transparency.

Until our breakthrough, one of the biggest obstacles faced by researchers developing New Energy’s SolarWindow™ technology has been the presence of metal, an opaque material which blocks all visibility and prevents light from passing through glass.  Eliminating metal has proved especially challenging since the metal component acts as the negative ‘polar contact’.

This important breakthrough replaces visibility-blocking metal with environmentally-friendly and more transparent compounds. These compounds now function as the negative polar contact and collect electricity from New Energy’s SolarWindow™.

The new SolarWindow™ coatings make use of the world’s smallest functional solar cells, which measure less than ¼ the size of a grain of rice, and have been shown to successfully produce electricity in a published peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy of the American Institute of Physics. They are sprayed on to see-thru glass using a novel, patent-pending process recently presented in AZoNano’s (peer-reviewed, Journal of Nanotechnology Online; Dec. 20, 2009), “Nanotechnology Thought Leaders” series.

The coatings do not require expensive high-temperature or high-vacuum production methods, but rather, can be sprayed on to glass at room temperature. They generate electricity from both natural and artificial light sources, reportedly outperforming today’s commercial solar and thin-film technologies by as much as 10-fold, while measuring less than 1/10th the thickness of ‘thin’ films (only 1/1000th the thickness of human hair).

Our SolarWindow™ technology -- capable of generating electricity on see-thru glass windows -- is under development for potential application in the estimated 5 million commercial buildings in America (source: Energy Information Administration) and more than 80 million single detached homes.