Green Cities
The Future of Green: Solar Windows
October 11, 2013
**This is the sixth installment of our new blog series: The Future of Green. Every other Friday we will post a blog about a cutting-edge and futuristic innovation in the world of green technology. Technology is one of several barriers that stand between today’s society and a sustainable future. The innovators we highlight through The Future of Green are shattering those barriers. Make sure to tune in every other Friday for a glimpse into the future of energy and sustainability.
A few weeks ago, we wrote about smart windows—windows capable of controlling the amount of heat and light that pass through, resulting in huge energy efficiency gains. Today, we highlight windows once again, this time focusing on “solar windows,” an emerging technology that allows windows to double as solar panels.
Leading the way in solar window technology is a public-private partnership between New Energy Technologies (NET) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Together, they’ve developed a solar window coating, composed of “the world’s smallest functional organic solar cells—“about one-fourth the size of a grain of rice. While typical solar panels use silicon, the smart window coating relies on hydrogen-carbon materials, considered “organic solar cells.”
Here’s how it works:
Once the solar coating has been applied to glass, the cells arrange themselves into a network connected by “invisible wires.” Electrons get knocked off of their atoms and start to move. That potential energy is eventually converted into usable electricity.
So what makes this technology different? For one, it’s transparent. And two, it can be sprayed, painted or applied retroactively to existing surfaces, which means that integrating the technology into our infrastructure should be fairly simple.