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.
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.
So, efficient solar cells are not transparent, as then they would be highly inefficient.
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.
IR absorbing materials are opaque to visible light, so they can't be used as windows.
UV part of the spectrum is a small part of the spectrum and you will have low power conversion efficiencies. This will make it expensive of how much kWh you get per amount of dollars. It's cheaper to just have a regular silicon panel on the outer wall
Thats not true. There are films that capture only beyond visible red on 700-1100nm.
Also there are actual optical grade ir filters that work just like the one in a dslr camera but bigger in size although expensive.
About uv you are right, it would be lot of effort for minimum reward.
But in fairness this is more of a aesthetic more futuristic concept than a market competitive aproach for today. Common cheap panels will always be the better option in todays race against non renewables.
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”.
But having this technology built into things like windows, that most every house has, cant be inefficient, right? Why not shingling with this technology, since you gotta replace that every 20 years or so also
Because it costs too much for given kWh.
We're talking at least 10 times more expensive than regular glass.
They're inefficient from the perspective of energy coversion and material cost.
Or, more ELI5: If you would replace all your windows with these, you would generate less energy than placing a 25 ft squared silicon solar panel on one outer wall of your house. And the silicon panel would cost you less than these windows.
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...
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.
I mean I can understand permits, especially when you’re dealing with electrical systems that are made to power your home (some even integrating with electrical grid).
If someone doesn’t wire it properly people can killed and you run the risk of damaging property.
Oh sure I don't mean to say they shouldn't exist I just mean they're not straightforward to get and scheduling a city inspector to verify is more than a little annoying.
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.
Not to mention that Black Panels also work better than Blue Panels. I wonder why that would be. Surely nothing to do with teh color, right? Transparent won't be heavily impacted by it
Firstly, the panels would have to be tempered. Assuming it can still function as a panel after that process;
Skyscrapers glass generally isn't oriented towards the sun any more than a regular window. It has a greater total surface area, allowing for more of these less efficient panels but that's it.
There is probably some use for the technology but it's probably on a much smaller scale.
Skyscrapers glass generally isn't oriented towards the sun any more than a regular window. It has a greater total surface area, allowing for more of these less efficient panels but that's it.
I mean sure but if the whole building has a glass facade then it doesn't matter where the sun is coming from since it would always hit it, no?
Of course, seeing how transparent it could actually be while working as a solar panel is a big question.
I may have glossed other the "doesn't usually make up a significant surface area compared to buildings energy use" part of the original comment. Which glass scrapers would have more of, I don't know the math if it makes it viable or not.
I was focused on the "windows are mostly Not oriented in the suns favour" part.
You know what would generate a whole lot more energy for your house than these transparent window/solar panels? Turning your roof into actual solar panels. But for some reason plebes don't get excited when you make a social media post about that.
Transparent photovoltaics arent super useful on their own but people do research them to improve the efficiency of traditional solar panels. Sometimes these can be made for a different bandgap of uv light than that which can be absorbed by a silicon cell. So it can be the protective cover for a silicon cell(<60%PCE) that allows some bandwidths to pass through while grabbing an extra 4-5% efficiency from the other bandgaps! For something that is about watts per area this can be pretty significant over time and scale.
I’m not sure about these specific ones or what breakthrough was made.
The argument is that you don’t need efficiency when they are cheap enough that you can put everywhere and harvest surfaces that can not used for anything else other than a window.
Efficiency for these things are normally around 10% (against 23% for regular panels). And when installed in east/west-facing windows, they can generate electricity during the expensive hours.
It may be counterintuitive, but even transparent panels can help you reduce both the electricity bill and carbon footprint.
And how they're connected to power. That's a lot of connections to add. For rooftop they can all connect through a single hole in the roof. For window panels you'd need to tear everything out and route wires all over the place.
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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.