Clear Solar Windows?

Clear Solar Windows from
http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2014/solar-energy-that-doesnt-block-the-view/
 

Lunt said more work is needed in order to improve its energy-producing efficiency. Currently it is able to produce a solar conversion efficiency close to 1 percent, but noted they aim to reach efficiencies beyond 5 percent when fully optimized. The best colored LSC has an efficiency of around 7 percent.
 

The research was featured on the cover of a recent issue of the journal Advanced Optical Materials.
 

Other members of the research team include Yimu Zhao, an MSU doctoral student in chemical engineering and materials science; Benjamin Levine, assistant professor of chemistry; and Garrett Meek, doctoral student in chemistry.
 


 

 

Some comments are very negative because its not photovoltaic but thermal…. but on a large office building with modified dual pane it could be cost effective, and low to no maintenance??

http://gizmodo.com/new-crystal-clear-solar-cells-could-power-your-smartpho-1624403522

The idea of a completely transparent solar panel has always been a bit of a dream. Such revolutionary technology would mean that we could turn windows into power generators and build phones with self-charging screens. Well, guess what? That dream is becoming a reality.

A team of researchers from Michigan State University has developed a completely transparent, luminescent solar concentrator. Whereas most traditional solar panels collect light energy from the sun using dark silicon cells and converted into electricity using the photovoltaic effect, solar concentrators actually focus sunlight onto a heat engine that produces electricity. In the case of this new technology, the plastic-like material channels specific wavelengths of sunlight towards the photovoltaic solar cells on the edge of the panel. “Because the materials do not absorb or emit light in the visible spectrum, they look exceptionally transparent to the human eye,” Richard Lunt, who led the research, explains in a release.

http://gizmodo.com/new-crystal-clear-solar-cells-could-power-your-smartpho-1624403522

 

 

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