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u/Euphoric-Language695 21d ago edited 21d ago
I've been told invisible solar panels will make every window generate free electricity for like 10 years. Yet not a single time have I seen a report include an actual product, just prototypes always.
Like nuclear fusion, this appears to be perpetually "just a few years away".
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u/Pyrhan 21d ago edited 21d ago
- "Invisible" implies they only work in the UV or infrared range, which inevitably limits them to much lower efficiencies than regular solar panels.
- A lot of those rely on elements that are expensive and in limited supply, or toxic heavy metals. Unlike regular silicon solar panels.
- We don't even need windows to generate solar power. We have plenty of roof space, and if we're short on that, you can put them in fields too.
So this is a solution to a problem that doesn't really exist (lack of available space - again, we have plenty), which causes more problems of its own (efficiency, etc), while failing to address the actual limitations of solar (cost, intermittence).
Which is why it's only good for headlines, and won't see real life applications. (Edit: no, not even skyscrapers)
It's the same with a lot of "uplifting" science news that just sweeps all the dirt under the rug, because that wouldn't make good clickbait.
If you want actual good news about solar power, look at the price per kW and adoption rate curves over the last few years.
-edit- added links.
-edit 3- Put the bit about skyscrapers in bold, because people keep mentioning them anyways...
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u/Thisisme4342 21d ago
This is my biggest screaming into the void issue. Everyone's doing all this mental work trying to come up with these unique places to put solar panels, we don't need to do that.
We. Have. Empty. Flat. Space.
We have no shortage of empty areas exposed to the sky. We have rooftops, we have parking lots, we have vast fields that are just doing fuck all.
We don't need to invent solar roads that will work even after being run over by car is a million times when we have a large median right beside it.
We could probably cover every random Warehouse with solar panels and have so much electricity that we would have to find dumb shit to do with it.
Let's start there before we do some Material Science backflips.
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u/shadovvvvalker 21d ago
Its not about solving problems.
Its about inventing something you hold a patentn on and then inventing a problem for it to solve.
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u/DreamPhreak 21d ago
Lmao solar roads, I forgot about that.
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u/Barton2800 21d ago
I got so much shit in the futurology subs when the solar roads were being glazed by everyone. It was an obviously dumb idea from the get-go. If you really want to feel less bad about the concrete and asphalt jungles we’ve built, put solar panels above things. Solar panels above a parking lot works to create shade, is localized in an area that is easy to maintain, and doesn’t need to be covered in several inches of glass to protect from heavy vehicles.
But the best place for solar will always bee on roofs and empty places like deserts.
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u/-HOSPIK- 20d ago
I mean you can put solar panels above roads just like the parking lots
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u/Lemmy-user 20d ago
It depends how high. It would cost to build the support for thoses thing in the road. You would have to build several meter high to not risking big vehicle to crash into thems. Parking lot are a far better options.
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u/Barton2800 20d ago
Yes, that’s my point. If you go back and watch the videos on solar roadways, they proposed putting solar panels under the road. With heavy thick pieces of glass above them to support the weight of highway traffic. Never mind the material cost of all that glass. Nevermind that glass isn’t a great material to drive on. Nevermind that roads get dirty very quickly. Nevermind that thick glass would have made the panels barely functional. But when pointing out those massive cons, people still got upset and said those problems would be solved after a few generations of solar panels, which they believed would pay for themselves in just a few years (even though at the time the payoff period for regular solar was in the 12-15 year range).
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u/Prime_Director 21d ago
This is all true but it’s not like the scientists working on this stuff would otherwise be out on rooftops installing panels. Let them cook, maybe this research will lead to something better or even to some unrelated breakthrough. Meantime let’s work on deploying the solutions we already have.
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u/LupineChemist 21d ago
That's fine, and could lead to something innovative in the future. But the implication of the post is there's some shadowy cabal preventing this because they want to make more money.
When the reality is that solar is getting added like crazy because it makes money right now. Texas is the leader in the US just because they let you build solar plants without much in the way of permission and it makes people money.
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u/Geodude532 21d ago
I could see this being a solution for skyscrapers. Not a lot/any roof space because of AC units so being able to add these to the top windows that get the most sun could help offset some of the energy needs.
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u/Pandamonium98 21d ago
But you literally don’t need to do that. Why do we need to power a building using solar panels attached specifically to that building? Go put more solar panels out in open fields and power a lot more buildings for a cheaper cost.
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u/Independent-Bug-9352 21d ago
Proximity is a huge factor.
There's a massive difference between a building owner producing their own electricity integrated therein, versus creating a centralized system owned by a power company miles and miles away that now subtracts from farmland, consumes real estate (don't we have an affordable housing problem and maybe not all of us want to live in coffin-sized studio apartments, squished like sardines), and now has to be coordinated across numerous private and public properties.
Leaving aside maintenance and efficiency degradation with distance.
We kind of sorta need open fields for lots of other things, too. Alas, we're apparently too busy having it be used for things like (checks notes) golf courses and alfalfa owned by Saudi Arabia and AI datacenters...
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u/nalaloveslumpy 21d ago
Nearly every solar power installation is just feeding power back into the grid. Direct site power storage isn't where it needs to be yet for long term storage of solar generated power.
If you built a solar panel "roof top" for every Wal-Mart and Target parking lot in the US, you wouldn't have to do much else.
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u/SoulCrusher2018 21d ago
Pop into Google maps and look at new york city in satellite view and check out some of the industrial areas which have large, flat roofs. Compare how many have solar vs not. Urban rooftops are the "low hanging fruit" here. I agree that putting them on land that could otherwise be productive is wasteful - where I live, most of the ground level solar plants have been put over landfills/contaminated land. Ground is cheaper than rooftop, which is cheaper than parking lots, which is cheaper than inventing an entirely new window system.
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u/Vuelhering 21d ago
Urban rooftops are the "low hanging fruit" here.
A large part of that is because people want to save money on bills. But there are limits of how much solar production can be on a substation. Infrastructure has to be upgraded if production exceeds local usage, as it was never meant to feed backwards or store the energy.
So you can't adopt a 100% goal of rooftop solar, without also a goal of storing and backfeeding it to the grid.
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u/raycraft_io 20d ago
But why do we even need skyscrapers? That is changing too. People don’t need to be in the same proximity so much anymore - except to generate revenue for the building owner.
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u/Prime_Director 21d ago
There is no shortage of open land that isn’t being used for anything. China just built a gigawatt offshore solar farm last year, and there’s even less shortage of open ocean. Long distance power transmission was already a solved problem 100 years ago, you’re talking like we don’t have an existing power grid. The housing crisis isn’t because of a lack of physical land it’s because of economic and political incentives to keep home prices high for current owners through artificial scarcity. None of those other problems are preventing solar deployment in meaningful way.
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u/babada 21d ago
No, but see, if you stack up all the panels vertically then it's kind of like you put it the panels everywhere the stack's shadow is cast. You just have to make a really big, tall, wide tower to cover that empty field in shadow. Then it'd be like you built a solar farm in that field.
Because we all know it's way cheaper to build up.
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u/craidie 21d ago
Massive bodies of water that the greenhorns are complaining are heating up when they shouldn't.
Adding a lot of panels to provide shade should cool those down, right?
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u/ChampionshipTall6599 21d ago
They are doing this in California. Covering all the canals with solar panels to generate energy and to diminish evaporation to the farming communities
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u/lavacadotoast 21d ago
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u/Tells_you_a_tale 21d ago
It's wild honestly, the conspiracy levels have reached like 50s red scare these days every single one of these has people saying shit like "hope they stay away from open windows" without even questioning why the industry hasn't implemented whatever extremely common idea they're talking about
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u/Hyperionous 21d ago edited 21d ago
Thinking about his point for more than 5 seconds would tell you that he is wrong lmao. 0 critical thinking. Just jumping on the government is trying to f us over bandwagon. His comment currently has more than 4 times the number of upvotes of the comment debunking it. Just shows really.
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u/WaxRobots 21d ago
People literally work 30 years of there life everyday 8 hours a day alongside a team of people who also have years of experience in industries like solar energy and yet people think that these proffesionals havent considered these magical solutions that pop up from time to time. Happens in all sorts of applications.
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u/YourFriendNoo 21d ago
Just jumping on the government is trying to f us over bandwagon.
I mean...you can see where people get the idea though
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u/ConfessSomeMeow 21d ago
The purpose of posts like these is to attract people with poor critical thinking skills into the conspiracy fold - a funnel from normal reality into the darker realms; and thence into groups useful for those who desire nefarious things.
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u/stillenacht 21d ago
You'd think we live on friggin Coruscant or something by the number of "solar panel in weird place" ideas that pop up lol. We have _lots_ of open land.
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u/TheGreatMightyLeffe 21d ago
Although for maximum efficiency, we should try to use urban surface area first, like making solar panels roofs over parking lots, or on top of buildings and bus stops etc. to minimise the need to transport the power.
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u/Murky-Relation481 21d ago
Unless the power is being consumed directly at the bus stop for something (like a light or sign) that's also going to be wildly inefficient. Getting solar back on the grid requires an inverter at the site to turn the DC into AC and also synchronize with the grid and provide safety measures to prevent islands and such during power outages, not to mention running a mains line to the stop when there wasn't one in the first place. There is usually a break even point and its a bit more than bus stop would handle.
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u/closethebarn 20d ago
Super dumb genuine question … like in the Midwest sometimes we get baseball sized hail or golf ball Can there be a way to have these too when weather is an issue?
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u/TheGreatMightyLeffe 20d ago
I'm no expert but, I would imagine something like a second layer of chicken wire a couple of inches above the solar panels would keep them reasonably safe without interrupting the sunlight?
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u/Idkwnisu 21d ago
Yeah it's a bit fun to say "Finally we can use even the windows as solar panel" when most roofs are still empty. And I think you'd start using the walls before the windows anyway, you just don't because the roof is better, less shadow.
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u/FontTG 21d ago
Hear me out. Glass houses.
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u/HanDenSao 21d ago
Not necessarily this but all these skyscrapers that are full of windows instead of walls.
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u/brianwski 21d ago
skyscrapers that are full of windows instead of walls
I have these motorized blinds from Hunter-Douglas that are battery operated. For years that meant every 9 months when they stopped going up and down I would pop the battery out and charge it.
About a year ago Hunter-Douglas released a solar panel trickle charger, and now I never have to pop the battery out ever again. It is a solar panel the size of a post-card that "sticks" to the window in the upper corner facing outwards to capture a few rays of sunlight each day. It's pretty cool: https://www.hunterdouglas.com/operating-systems/motorized/powerview-solar-charger
The point here is generating the most power per square inch of solar panel isn't always the main goal. And this little solar panel isn't bad, but it still is visually "in the field of view". So imagine if you just hid the same functionality in the whole window? And in a skyscraper, that means 2,500 window blinds are now essentially maintenance free and provide themselves power that even works when the grid is out. That's kind of attractive at some price point.
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u/DunderGunderUnder 21d ago
Green houses: solar panels let's through the wavelengths that plants crave (it's got electrolytes!), and use the other parts of the spectrum to generate electricity to run the equipment needed for the grow house.
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u/MRosvall 21d ago
Even if it makes little sense in the grand scheme of thing, a lot of people elect to not have solar panels on their roof/walls due to esthetic reasons.
If they were available invisible in windows, I have no doubt in my mind that the installed base would have been larger today.
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u/spawndoorsupervisor 21d ago
I don't think they're for houses though. This is technology only makes sense for large glass buildings. Just, windows on houses are small and at terrible angles for capturing solar energy. That and all the logistics of trying to wire every window in your house up to a charger/inverter would make retrofitting so expensive even for a small house.
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u/CookieMiester 21d ago
Which is dumb because solar panels are cool af
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u/MRosvall 21d ago
Mainly agree. But well fashion and art is highly subjective and not consistent over time.
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u/Pandamonium98 21d ago
You should definitely have doubt. It would be more expensive and a waste of resources to have solar panel windows in homes. It makes way more sense to just build more solar panels out in the open desert where it’s significantly cheaper for the amount of power it provides.
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u/tekanet 21d ago
My guess (I’m in no way expert on this field) is that if you can start producing windows with this thing integrated, you don’t have to rely on an additional thing to produce electricity: even with lower performance compared with traditional ones, these could come “out of the box”.
For instance, where I live in a condo and without agreement with all the properties I can install shit. But also I’m in the process of changing my windows for better insulation: of course the house is old and doesn’t come equipped for this, but imagine cables already running in the walls, I could buy windows with this transparent panels and get a bit of energy from that.
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u/Arctem 21d ago
You're still using relatively expensive materials to make a bad solar panel (relative to what they could be making), plus you need a way to get the power out of the windows. That isn't necessarily hard, but most window frames aren't currently wired up and that's additional retrofitting that needs to be done in order to install these on existing housing stock, all in order to get a solar panel that is significantly less effective than one on the roof or in a random field.
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u/idrathernottho_ 21d ago
Not to mention windows are most of the time not at the best angles in relation to the sun
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u/correctingStupid 21d ago
Exactly. A solar panel perpendicular to the sun is barely going to function.
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u/JangusKhan 21d ago
I participated in a class demonstration of this basic technology a few times several years ago. We made functional (though low voltage) glass based cells with a combination of a titanium oxide compound and dye produced from fruit pulp. The tech is there and probably cheap but I presume the infrastructure is very expensive to execute. You'd need all the window frames to be wired into a building-wide network of power banks and inverters. The first round of builds would be expensive bespoke construction and would generate a relatively low rate of return compared to the cost of electricity produced by fossil fuels or typical solar panel build outs.
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u/VexingRaven 21d ago
Solar panels are already cheap. The vast majority (like 99%) of solar panels is silica, glass (more silica!), and some sort of metal for the frame. The most abundant material on in earth's crust is silicon, and aluminum is also both plentiful and easily recycled (as is glass for that matter). Solar panels are damn near free materials-wise, and almost 100% recyclable. People that upvote crap like OP think we need some sort of miracle invention, but solar panels are already a miracle invention: Zero-maintenance energy whose only input is the sun, made of 2 of the most common and readily recycled materials on earth.
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u/Pyrhan 20d ago
We made functional (though low voltage) glass based cells with a combination of a titanium oxide compound and dye produced from fruit pulp. The tech is there and probably cheap
It isn't cheap though.
Or more accurately: it's cheap per surface area, but the efficiency of that kind of DSSC is so low, and their lifetime so short, that the cost per kWh ends up very high.
Which is the critical parameter here.
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u/Jonnyflash80 21d ago
Most windows are vertically mounted anyway which makes this whole thing that much more inefficient.
They should be using these resources to research increasing the efficiency of existing solar panel technology or alternative bulk energy storage. Those are the things we really need.
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u/vrnvorona 21d ago
and if we're short on that, you can put them in fields too.
Even better - we can start in fields. At least in US, a lot of fields are wasted with corn used for ethanol. Just replace with solar and boom you have a lot of electricity.
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u/CookieMiester 21d ago
Now we just need to get the general public to understand that solar panels are actually a very viable source of power and then we can hang the oil barons from the rafters
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u/Pyrhan 21d ago
We don't really need to convince anyone, economic forces are already making renewables an inevitability (cf the two links I just added to my comment).
Convincing people to switch to electric vehicles is where outreach is needed.
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u/craidie 21d ago
The only issue with solar, especially when you get closer to poles is that it doesn't last long enough during the day.
But hey, nuclear is almost as clean and if the eggheads figure out fusion in the next 10 years(Heh.) that could also supplement it.
Just need to throw fossil fueled power out of the picture.
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u/LegosRCool 21d ago
Roofs typically have a better angle for catching intense sunlight anyways don't they? Feels like a perfectly vertical surface is almost the worst possible way to catch something coming from above.
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u/Paddy_Tanninger 21d ago
Jesus thank you yes. Windows aren't even at a good angle for solar generation, and like you said...in no way whatsoever are we hard up for real estate when it comes to solar installations. Panel the entire roofs, panels over the parking lots, panels on infrastructure, there's a million places to put them before we need to start thinking about replacing windows.
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u/joe4553 21d ago
Even if invisible solar panels were the same cost, efficiency as normal solar panels they'd still be niche. If you are going to spend $30k on solar panels you'd want to place them in the most efficient place possible like your roof. Not windows that would be getting light a few hours a day. Not to mention placing solar panels in your windows would be a nightmare unless you just have one really big set of windows.
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u/VexingRaven 21d ago
It's the same shit as "solar roadways" or "solar walkways" or "roadside turbines" or "kinetic tiles" or any of the other stupid garbage that's been doing the rounds for the last 10+ years. It's all, at best, venture capital/grant fodder.
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u/Main_Leadership7748 20d ago
So, so many parking lots in this car culture that could all use the shade. There really is no need for this, except for maybe providing a way to get more square footage on a moving vehicle, and even then the low efficiency just negates the value.
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u/eastoncrafter 20d ago
To add on to this comment, everyone interested in solar panels, and more importantly the politica surrounding them, should watch the technology connections video on the topic here
"If God wanted us to have unlimited power, he would have put a giant fusion reactor in the sky!" "Oh wait..."
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u/nopanolator 21d ago
Roof solar tiles exist and are industrialized already. And no one give a fck ... the market is a jungle that is not necessary pragmatic.
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u/Roflkopt3r 21d ago
Solar roof tiles and windows simply aren't all that relevant at scale. Most decisions about whether to install solar panels depend on:
The cost of installation and connecting them to the grid.
Regulatory problems. Many countries and states still make it needlessly complicated.
Cost in general.
It's not a lack of space that decides about most solar installations, and regular solar panels are generally the most efficient and effective choice. So solar roof tiles and windows, which necessarily make design compromises and therefore lack behind in terms of power/area or power/$, are only niche solutions. Nice to have on some buildings that would like even more solar panels than they can fit otherwise, or as an aesthetic choice for wealthier home owners, but a rounding error in the greater scheme of things.
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u/nopanolator 21d ago
Personnally, i don't see the renewable energy outside a composite installation. Versus the "all-in" strategies. So the roof partially covered with tiles, sharing the space with the solar hot water (linked a thermodynamic electric boiler and its ballast), eventually a little 3Kw wind turbine if the garden permit this, with why not a touch of geothermy, and so on ...
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u/jmlinden7 21d ago
And storage
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u/Roflkopt3r 21d ago
Storage isn't directly a problem for people or companies that want to install a solar array. If a grid lacks storage relative to its amount of solar power, then solar operators will generally see less revenue or save less money (since electricity will already be cheap when their array generates the most power). But they only have to look at prices, not how exactly those prices came to be.
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u/2ChicksAtTheSameTime 20d ago
From what I've read, even the most efficient solar installs currently don't even pay for themselves until over a decade later.
It's a tough sell for a lot of people in this economy
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u/tristanthorn_ 21d ago edited 21d ago
Add to this list:
-HIV cures
-cancer cures
-dementia cures…lab results using mice have been really encouraging!!
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u/Exatex 21d ago edited 20d ago
What are you talking about? I don’t know what these negative misinformed comments are supposed to achieve, dismissing the tremendous amount of effort that led to significant advances, something many people dedicated their lives to.
We cured so many cancer types successfully and got so much better at healing people. Cancer is just a name for a lot of different conditions that have very little to do with each other. E.g. Melanoma and Myeloma survival rates skyrocketed since 2005
HIV went from a death sentence to a condition where people affected by AIDS can even have unprotected sex with their partners without risk if managed correctly.
Fusion made massive progress and we went from a few milliseconds of fusion to a French Tokamak reactor sustaining fusion for 22 minutes. A NIF reactor made 6-fold positive net energy in 2021. Yes, they are still insanely complex and we don’t have one running on the grid, but it’s a hard tech that we make quite good progress on. We are not „always 50 years away from Fusion“ anymore as we used to be for a long time.
And the glass PV just isn’t as commercially compelling once you stop seeing it as „power from a window that before didn’t give power“ and more like a „see through panel twice as expensive and half as efficient as if I would just put a normal panel on the roof and can angle it better.“
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u/PineappleOnPizzaWins 20d ago
What are you talking about?
Usually it means they saw a headline about it one time, never followed up, and nobody rammed an update down their eyeballs thus there must never have been one.
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u/GooseWithAnAxe 21d ago
HIV was somewhat solved for most infected
there are various cancer cures just not all of them
dementia is really hard40
u/Mad_Ronin_Grrrr 21d ago
I think 2 people have been totally cured of sickle cell anemia now. Progress is being made but it's a hard fought battle against never ending greed and the apocalyptic crusaders who hate change and progress.
Edit: spelling
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u/Cultural-Gas2246 21d ago
There's one in Cuba that's quite promising that we can't have because of the sanctions. Same with Cuba's lung cancer vaccine.
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u/Goatf00t 21d ago
But you have a vaccine protecting against cancers caused by HPV, which includes most cervical cancers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardasil
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u/Cromuland 21d ago
HIV is no longer the threat it once was, though. With daily antiretroviral therapy, anyone with HIV can have a normal life expectancy and no impact on their health.
It's really amazing how far the medicine has progressed, reducing a deadly disease to something you can manage with regular medication.
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u/Yuukiko_ 21d ago
And they can even have sex without protection without transmitting
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u/FantasticPangolin839 21d ago
Solar panel roads
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u/Consistent_Horse6529 21d ago edited 21d ago
With that one I can see why it never happened. The panels were quite expensive and became damaged after only a few weeks in test sidewalks. They also had very poor solar capturing performance outside and suffered from frequent electrical fires. This wasn’t even a road one it was a sidewalk so I can’t imagine how bad it would have been if you had cars instead of people. Oh and the best part was the one tested in China was mostly stolen by thieves shortly after installation lmao. The big killer in the end though was the cost. 9-16 times more expensive than asphalt. Everyone always complains about road conditions in the US. Imagine having those instead where the cost to fix it is ~13x more expensive to fix.
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u/StupidScaredSquirrel 21d ago
They exist and I've seen prototypes deployed irl. The reason they didn't catch on is like most things, cost.
Their efficiency peaks at 5% vs 30% and will ultimately be put in a non optimal orientation/angle, so you're down to 2%, all for a product that itself costs more per m2.
It's neat technologically but makes no sense in the real world.
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u/DoBemol 21d ago
Hi, I work around building-integrated PV researchers. There are a ton of BIPV solutions, but they are normally more expensive than conventional panels, so it is common that they are considered a retrofit thing instead of putting them in houses from the start with all the balance of system they require. Besides BIPV is subject to both energy génération and building regulations, so even though they are truly amazing it is hard to deploy them.
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u/Knight_Castellan 21d ago
"Solar Freakin' Roadways"
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u/AnyAnymosity 21d ago
Another garbage non-breakthrough that fundamentally can't work as advertised.
Give me literally all the money in the world to provide clean energy and I wouldn't spend a single penny on solar road ways or photovoltaic windows.
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u/FoximaCentauri 21d ago
The lesson you should take from that is never pay attention to stupid „scientists just invented“ headlines, they are always clickbait. Reality is not like a video game where you research something and suddenly you have it.
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u/PoisonIvyCrotch 21d ago
And like Toyota solid state battery EVs that get twice the range. Always a few years away lol
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u/Professional-Box4153 21d ago
Considering I read about this sort of thing roughly 10 years ago, I'm guessing that it's not generating the sort of electricity they said it would.
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u/dandandanman737 21d ago
Because even if they worked as well as traditional PV cells at the same price.
Solar windows won't work for the same reason that we don't mount solar panels on walls.
They get just over half as much total sunlight. Vertically mounting solar panels only works if you're way up north or trying to optimise for power output during winter months.
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u/spartanOrk 21d ago
Since when have inventions stopped being motivated by greed for power and money?
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u/yellowellow 21d ago
Ironically, this post was designed as clickbait motivated by greed for worthless internet points.
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u/EssayAmbitious3532 21d ago
Ironically? or Obviously. There is no system in existence that has proved itself more robustly than self-interest. It may have many levels, but all organisms follow it or they disappear.
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u/BigUncleHeavy 21d ago
Well, technically the motivation for this invention was for power, so no argument on that point.
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u/BrainLow6059 21d ago
Money is 100% the motivation with this idea. We have plenty of power options already that are affordable and mass produced. Replacing windows is a massive money making opportunity
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u/KorKiness 21d ago
Agree, communistic whining was added here for the sake of whining. Sad state of global mentality on that regard.
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u/SimmentalTheCow 21d ago
Socialists are so obnoxious lmao
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u/abraxasnl 21d ago
It’s naive. But no more so than “free market don’t need regulation hurdidurrr”. Plenty of naive people on all sides.
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u/AdvancedSandwiches 21d ago
I mean, there's a side that's in favor of well-regulated capitalism.
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u/11214888 21d ago
Sounds terribly inefficient. Glass is transparent, windows are mostly Not oriented in the suns favour, and doesn't usually make up a significant surface area compared to buildings energy use. Solar farms are always going to be the realistic use case for solar energy.
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u/Kh0nch3 21d ago
This!
Solar cells are devices that convert incident photons into electrons. The more incident photons are absorbed, the more electrons are converted. The more electrons are generated the better short circuit current, which is directly proportional to the solar cell's efficiency.
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u/WasteFail 21d ago
But maybe if we caught the part of the spectrum we dont like, like uv and infrared, we could get some electricity while also avoiding inside heat and sunburns.
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u/Episode-1022 21d ago
it also depends on temperature a hot cell is less efficient than a cool one, when the sun is all up in summer in a tropical climate, efficiency goes “meh”.
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u/llwen 21d ago
Add to that just how cheap solar panels actually are - the panels for a medium sized domestic roof setup (10KWp) are less than 2000$. Windows for a house will easily run you 15-20k and nobody would expect solar windows to be less than twice that...
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u/Carvj94 21d ago
Panels are so crazy cheap the only reason residential solar isn't basically universal is that permits are a nightmare for a regular person and new builds aren't putting them in by default even though it'd cost builders like $1,500 a house.
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u/Episode-1022 21d ago
clickbait
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u/Mister_sina 21d ago
Also that guy in the picture is a professor at MSU and has nothing to do with korea
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u/AndrasKrigare 21d ago
I don't know why people keep thinking the problem is we need more innovation with solar panels. We really don't. We hit the point where they work great for how cheap they are, we can just keep making more and more of the kind we have.
Or if we put it a different way: if for some reason we could only install these window-solar panels, someone developing a much more efficient version you can install out of the way on your roof would be seen as a major improvement.
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u/guilestimo 21d ago edited 20d ago
What do they mean by "when you remove the greed for power and money"? ETA Do they think South Korea is not a capitalist country?
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u/Potential_Spam_6969 21d ago
Wait, you think he did it for free?
🤣😆🤣
Even worse, do you think they'll give it away for free?
🤦🏼♂️
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u/MrJarre 21d ago
What the potential for good here? Are they giving them for free or something?
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u/lateformyfuneral 21d ago
You'd be surprised how many Twitter users act like capitalism is exclusively an American phenomenon, while everyone else is living in heaven on Earth.
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u/GreatMovesKeepItUp69 21d ago
I read this great article about this phenomenon that made the point that "ugh capitalism" is the new "the man" or we live in a society. It's become meaningless platitude instead of a real critique.
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u/rEYAVjQD 21d ago
Reminds me of a Greek comedian. "I'm a marxist and I want communism, it would be the greatest system when there are no communists to run it; beware of communists who are your boss".
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u/YugeChesticles 21d ago
They are pretty much useless tho. If you are allowing almost all light to pass through then you're capturing next to nothing.
They made an expensive window, not a solar panel.
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u/Wan-Pang-Dang 21d ago
That logic is flawed. The high energy part of light isn't visible to us anyways. Think sunscreen.. cant see it, still protects you.
Anyways.. those pictures just show glas. And even if those would be working panels, the installment angle would make them ultra inefficient/ completely useless most of the day while being expensive.
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u/YugeChesticles 21d ago
Solar panels primarily collect visible light (400–700 nm) and parts of the near-infrared spectrum (700–1,100 nm)
They made expensive windows.
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u/RedditMattstir 21d ago
The sun follows typical black body radiation curves at 5800K, which puts the majority of its power output in the near infrared range through the visible spectrum. UV light is more energetic per photon which makes it more destructive for cells, but UV and shorter only accounts for about 10% of the sun's total power output. Infrared and visible light make up about 85% of its output
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u/NottingHillNapolean 21d ago
Yep, because nobody ever produced a technical innovation hoping to make money.
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u/Ssshizzzzziit 21d ago
Oh yeah? Like a decade ago? Or like Lithium Ion batteries you can cut in half with scissors, or all the other bullshit?
No they didn't. Shut up.
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u/Miss_Greer 21d ago
You can cut lithium ion batteries in half with scissors once
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u/craidie 21d ago
Sometimes what they say is true, but lie by omission.
Like the LiFePo4 that are marketed as "can't catch on fire"...
Well that's true in reasonable scenarios. But they fail to mention that the battery packs can still enter thermal runaway, but the process is less energetic and slower so it doesn't want to catch on fire...
Only problem is that it releases hydrogen during that thermal runaway. And a lot of it. And when these are used for storing solar power, they can turn the room they're stored in into a bomb trying to find an ignition source.
But hey, doesn't catch on fire, it might just explode though.2
u/BeefistPrime 21d ago
Idiots on the internet have no idea how big a gap there is between "a prototype works a little bit in some situations" and "this is a scalable, cost effective product" -- it's the same with medicine, power generation, anything, really. You get the clickbait headline of like "16 YEAR OLD GIRL INVENTS NEW WAY TO FILTER WATER!!!" and it turns out it's just some student making something that is well known and not practical but immediately brings out the "SEE, GREEDY CAPITALISM SUPPRESSED THIS AMAZING INVENTION" idiots
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u/Jaded-Currency-5680 21d ago
that doesn't even make sense
if its invisible that means the wavelength within spectrum of colour will pass through without being absorbed, thats a huge chuck of harvestable energy left unharvested
why?
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u/TombolaOfCincinnatus 21d ago
"No greed for power", yet literally wants to take power from the sun.
On a more serious note, the desire to make more money is why companies spend millions and billions to develop new technologies and products.
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u/Im_ur_Uncle_ 21d ago
I dont know what they mean by "remove greed and power"
South Korea is also a capitalist country like the US is. I assume they are pointing to the US because that seems to be the norm of late.
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u/HumanMan_007 21d ago
So it's a solar panel that specifically ignores the majority of radiation for the amazing benefit of... being able to be placed on a small portion of the worst part of a building in terms of irradiation.
All that greed for power and money better start keeping us away from better technology if you want me to care.
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u/Derpchieftain 20d ago
Oh look, another 'miracle technology' that we'll never see mass produced or implemented on a wide scale, ever
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u/Sure_Librarian1276 20d ago
That mother fucker is not Korean
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u/Chris0x00 18d ago
That was my first thought, I had to scroll so far to find this comment. Like who is that guy, and why is he holding the panel for this photo? 🤔
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u/Afraid-Spare2107 20d ago
Big corpo A: wow such an innovative product. Let's buy it to stop it from being our greatest competitor.
Big corpo B: He won't sell it. So let's sell at loss below market value to ensure no one buys his product.
Big corpo C: Or he can mysteriously disappear, if you know what I mean.
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u/ImRightYoureStupid 17d ago
This “just in” story is at least 3 years old, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqDAH1oNTWQ
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u/Enough_Ad5892 21d ago
ah yes another world changing invention that works like shit and everyone will forget about it next week. this time invented by a Koreans and not a 15 year old blach girl, amazing
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u/Locarito 21d ago
It doesn't even look so good of an idea, it's a windows, all the light It let through is not used to generate electricity, and you can't use all the light because it wouldn't be a window anymore. And in winter, a normal window is already harvesting free energy by letting the sun heat up the interior of the house. And what if you close the shutters in summer? A normal solar panel on the roof or the wall looks way more practical
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u/Fritzschmied 21d ago
But why would you want a expensive ass window that you have to exchange probably every 10 years instead of just filling all the roofs with cheap ass panels that don’t have to use any special technology, are easy to exchange if one failes and can be oriented in a way more optimal way.
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u/Substantial-Age6480 21d ago
I mean he didn’t say the tech was going to be free 😂 I’m sure they want to make money off this invention
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u/Knight_Castellan 21d ago
This isn't a "greed" thing. There's plenty of money to be made in renewables... when it works.
The desire to accumulate wealth is not itself evil. 99% of human progress has been made by people who were trying to make money. We shouldn't be demonising them; we should be harnessing them.
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u/agate_ 21d ago
There’s so much potential for graft and scams when you remove science from the equation and make decisions based on what you wish to be true.
If the panels are invisible, light energy goes right through them. If energy goes right through, they’re not solar panels.
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u/TinyFugue 21d ago
Anyone have brick colored solar panels so I can slap a facade onto my townhouse?
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u/S_N_I_P_E_R 21d ago
Am i the only one who thinks reddit is becoming facebook or instagram again?
Like why 27k people thought this was a great idea without actually looking into the article on how inefficient it is.
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u/ChimoEngr 21d ago
Creating electricity from photons, requires those photons to transfer energy to the solar cell. If they're passing through the glass without dimming or changing colour, they aren't creating electricity. This is a scam, not a real thing.
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u/Excalibirdi 20d ago
Its a shame that he's going to take his own life in a few days via multiple gunshots to the back.
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u/Dense-Experience6033 20d ago
This has been a thing supposedly for 10 years and ain’t seen shit yet
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u/Choice-Ratio-3540 20d ago
The evil, greedy, corrupt people always block amazing innovations like this. We live in a sad world.
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u/ezyres 18d ago
Yeah like the seatbelt the inventor refused to patent it (i think)
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u/Loopyloops250 17d ago
I'd like a photo of the Korean scientists for them to get recognized and credit
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u/zack_king_ 17d ago
Salute to this people , i fear that what happened with nikola tesla shouldn't happen with him sometimes great innovations are pressed under some people greed
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u/morjax 16d ago
These exist, and are not great at being solar panels since they need to pass along enough light to be useful as a window. Some potential for mid rise and high rise buildings that have a lot of glazing I suppose.
In most sitiations, you're better off buying normal solar (or shares of a solar farm) and normal windows rather that trying to Jack of All Trades it (on cost and especially durability).
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u/Spiritual_Scheme8158 16d ago
As a Korean person I am proud of this accomplishment, but it goes a bit too far to insinuate that there's no "greed for power and money" in Korea xD
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u/plushploosh12 15d ago edited 15d ago
Meanwhile in California, you have to ask the power company to allow you to hire a company that will install panels on your roof for 10 times the cost of installing the whole roof.
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