The innovators : Savings on lighting, electricity, heating, ventilation and air conditioning can amount to 23% at peak times, says maker of Dynamic Glass

Looking out of the south-east-facing windows from the lobby of San Francisco’s hip downtown W hotel, you would be forgiven for thinking the view looks subtly different from what you would expect to see through normal glass.

The luxury high-rise hotel, which claim rooms to be “green 24/7”, uses “smart” glass that can be tinted to different settings throughout the day to regulate the amount of heat and light coming through, protecting the customers from the glare of the sun while they are sitting in one of the high-backed couches of the chic establishment.

Just over 45 miles south is Silicon Valley, the home of View, the company making the glass that can be controlled from a smartphone to darken or lighten a window, a technology that promises in many cases to do away with the need for curtains and blinds and save significant amounts of energy spent on cooling.

With more than $300m (£190m) in investment, the company is one of a number of players trying to bring to reality a new era of glass, hoping to make it standard first in offices, later in homes – and as a result tap into the billions spent every year on windows for both new constructions and retrofitting existing buildings.

Developments have been rapid in the six years since Rao Mulpuri joined View as chief executive. In that time the idea of glass which can change tint - similar to some rearview mirrors in cars and sunglasses - has been scaled up to the extent that the glass can line the front of hospitals and schools.

“Frankly, I gave it about a 10% chance of success [when I joined]. And that was high enough for me. I thought the technology needed to be developed further,” Mulpuri recalled.

“There was a lot of work to be done. And there were enough risks to take it to commercial scale that you could put all of that in that 90% category.

“A month into my job, I was completely wrong. It had about a zero percent chance of success. The designs and the materials the company was using at the time were not durable, were not scaleable so we essentially did a restart at that point.”

Out of that restart came the company’s ‘Dynamic Glass’ which can progress through four different levels of tinted shade depending on how strongly the sun is shining, or remain fully clear.

This is achieved through electrochromic technology - using materials which change colour when an electrical charge is applied. The View panels consist of one piece of glass treated with an electrochromic metal oxide coating, which is one fiftieth the thickness of a human hair – this is then sealed with another one or two panes of glass.

Also in the glass unit is a low voltage wire connected to thin strips similar to those that heat the rear windshield of a car, which conduct electricity and change the state of the glass through its four different stages of tint, depending on how much voltage is applied.

After two years in the market, View has completed 120 projects, mostly in North America, with a handful in Germany from schools and universities to hospitals and some private homes.

When in use the glass tint can control the amount of light and heat that gets into the building while at the same time remaining transparent. Windows can be grouped into different zones - such as north, south, east and west - which can be controlled together as the sun exposure varies.

The price of the bespoke ‘smart’ glass can be between five and six times that of a normal piece of glass but ends up at equal cost or with a 1% premium in a fully finished building, according to Mulpuri, an engineer by background who grew up in India. Savings on lighting, electricity, heating, ventilation and air conditioning can amount to 23% at peak times, the company says.

Mulpuri, who after arriving in the US in the late 1980s worked for 11 years in the semiconductor industry, bemoans the building industry’s reliance on energy-hungry ways of controlling temperature.

“With the advent of air conditioning, we found ways to take the heat out so we found ways to make the windows bigger so we still have the view, and when there is too much light we kept closing it up - and using big air conditioning systems to take the heat out,” he said.

Most of View’s projects so far have been for commercial buildings with the company also pushing the health and wellbeing benefits. Research claiming that hospital patients in a “day-lit” room recover up to 20% quicker – and thus spend less time on the wards – is cited along with statistics that students in rooms with more daylight are faster with maths and reading.

Future plans are to move into the residential market as some high-end homeowners are willing to pay for their coastal homes looking onto the sea. “They are paying for the views and then closing the blinds all day,” said Mulpuri.

There are about six other companies working to bring the technology to scale, he said, in a sector where there is room for a number of players, amongst them SageGlass from Minnesota, owned by the French building materials group Saint Gobain.

Mulpuri told Forbes magazine that about 25bn square feet of glass a year are used for architectural purposes and even if only a portion of that market switches to dynamic glass that ultimately results in a market size of $100bn.

The main hurdle, he said, is not competition but entrenched attitudes in an area which is not known for embracing rapid change.

“Our ‘competition’ is risk aversion. People saying ‘great technology, I will do it in my next building’ is the most common reason we get a ‘no’ because people are afraid of the change and nobody ever gets fired for using regular windows with blinds and shades because that is what the rest of the town is doing,” he said.

Another stumbling block comes in existing windows and blinds in that they form an accepted part of the interior decoration of most homes and offices. “If you love them keep them. To control glare, use my product,” said Mulpuri. “We wear clothes a certain way. It is not always the most efficient piece of clothing and we think the same is true here.”

Europe, he expects, will be receptive to the glass as attitudes are more orientated towards conservation and regulations are more in favour of energy efficiency, while the technology has other possible uses in transport and electronics.