Solar Power Windows Fast Approaching Commercial Production

May 17th, 2013 by James Ayre

Commercial production of solar windows, using the patented SolarWindow spray-on solar power coating system, may be just around the corner. A recent announcement from US building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) developer New Energy Technologies Ltd. (which we’ve been following for years) has us feeling that the time may soon come.

As per New Energy Technologies’ recent announcement, the big news is that the fabrication time of the technology has been greatly reduced. The fabrication process, which involves methodically spraying layers of extremely small solar cells onto glass, has been reduced from a couple of days to only a couple of hours. According to the company, the process has been cut to 1/6 of the previous fabrication time.

And perhaps as significantly, New Energy has also reported that it has achieved “a two-fold increase in power conversion efficiency” and improved the transparency of the glass. Here are some more notes from the company:

Researchers achieved today’s advances by way of a novel, patent-pending breakthrough, which enables fabrication of large-scale mini-module SolarWindow™ devices, important to commercial deployment of the world’s first-of-its-kind glass window capable of generating electricity. Generating electricity on glass windows is possible when New Energy researchers spray ultra-small, see-through solar cells on to glass surfaces. These novel spray-on techniques have been pioneered, advanced, and unveiled in operating prototypes by scientists who initiated early research efforts with New Energy Technologies under a Sponsored Research Agreement at the University of South Florida (USF). The Company’s SolarWindow™ technology has since progressed significantly beyond early research, and is now in advanced product development.





For previous stories about New Energy’s SolarWindow technology, see:

Notably, however, New Energy Technologies isn’t the only company working on such technology (it may just be the leader). Also check out:

In other words, a lot of people are working on developing this technology and getting it to market.









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