Manhattan has roughly forty seven thousand buildings with around 10.7 million windows, based on a 2013 estimate from The New York Times.

Now think about if just 1%, that’s 100,700, of these windows could generate electricity via transparent solar cells.
That is the concept behind solar power windows, and at least two firms are hoping to sell the technology to windows manufacturers, saying once put in in a building the technology pays for itself in about an year.

“If you look at the glass that’s manufactured worldwide today, 2% of it’s used for solar panels; 80% of it is used in buildings. That is the opportunity,” stated Suvi Sharma, CEO of solar panel maker Solaria.

Solaria uses existing photo voltaic (PV) cells and slices them into 2.5mm strips. It then sandwiches these thin PV strips between glass layers in a window. “The way human eye works, you don’t even notice them,” Sharma mentioned.

Solaria Solar window
Solaria
Solaria uses photo-voltaic cells cut into 2.5mm strips and embedded in window glass to generate electricity. That’s what a typical system would look like.

Another benefit? Because the PV strips absorb light striking a window, they cut back the “solar heat gain coefficient”; in other words, the windows reduce the sunlight’s impact on a building’s internal air temperature and thereby decrease air conditioning costs.

Solaria is focusing on its technology for windows that will likely be installed in newly constructed buildings.

Another firm, SolarWindow Technologies, is pitching a different type of transparent PV cell technology for new construction, replacement windows and retrofits to existing windows.

SolarWindow is utilizing what it calls organic photovoltaics, which can vary in coloration and transparency. The company is planning to announce its product in a few weeks.

SolarWindow CEO John Conklin stated what sets his firm’s technology apart is its ease of integration. Because it is based on a PV film, it may be adhered to existing windows or integrated into manufactured products relatively easily.

 

SolarWindow Tech
SolarWindow Technologies
Electricity generating SolarWindow module that is being developed in architecturally neutral colors.

Depending on the number of south-facing windows, which get a majority of the sun’s light, and the construction’s location in the U.S., Solaria’s technology may provide from 20% to 30% of a skyscraper’s power needs, Conklin stated.

Conklin wouldn’t disclose precisely which organic materials SolarWindow makes use of.

In 2013, however, Oxford University researchers released the results of a study on how neutral-colored, semi-transparent photo voltaic cells made of perovskite could be utilized in building and car windows to generate electrical energy. Perovskite is an oxide used in ceramic superconductors.

Man holding solar window
Oxford Energy
Oxford University professor Henry Snaith holds up a clear piece of glass that has a transparent perovskite solar cell film on it.

The Oxford researchers said they could create transparent solar cells with comparatively high efficiencies. For example, the researchers were able to drive PV efficiencies up to 20% in a “remarkably short period of time” using a simple cell architecture.

The university’s work is being commercialized by Oxford Photovoltaics (a spin-out company), which is planning to produce attractively colored and semi-transparent glass, which works as a solar cell and could be integrated into the facades of buildings and windows.

Similarly, a team of researchers at Michigan State University (MSU) has developed a new type of transparent solar concentrator that when placed over a window creates solar energy.

Called a transparent luminescent solar concentrator (TLSC), MSU’s technology can not only be used on building windows but also on cell phones and any other device that has a clear, uncolored surface.

Clear solar cell
Yimu Zhao
A team of researchers at Michigan State University has developed a new type of transparent solar concentrator that when placed over a window creates solar energy.

Richard Lunt of MSU’s College of Engineering said the key to the TLSC technology is that it’s completely transparent.

“No one wants to sit behind colored glass,” Lunt, an assistant professor of chemical engineering and materials science, said in a statement. “It makes for a very colorful environment, like working in a disco. We take an approach where we actually make the luminescent active layer itself transparent.”

MSU’s solar harvesting technology uses small organic molecules developed by Lunt and his team to absorb specific non-visible wavelengths of sunlight.

One problem with MSU’s technology is that more work is needed to improve its energy efficiency. Currently it is able to produce a solar conversion efficiency close to 1%, but the researchers hope to achieve efficiencies beyond 5% when fully optimized.

Today, traditional solar power panels that reside in solar farms or on building rooftops can achieve a PV efficiency of about 15% to 20%. The efficiency rating refers to how much of the photons striking a solar cell are converted into energy.

Solaria’s solar window technology can achieve a solar efficiency of about 8% to 10%. SolarWindow’s Conklin would not disclose his company’s technology efficiency rating, but did say it was less than standard PV panels.

“Obviously when you’re looking at absorbing visible light and it’s transparent, it’s not as efficient as an opaque panel,” Conklin said.

When it comes to solar windows, however, efficiency matters less than transparency, Conklin said.

Making the solar window
Photo by G.L. Kohuth
Yimu Zhao, a doctoral student in chemical engineering and materials science at Michigan State University, and Richard Lunt, assistant professor of chemical engineering and materials science, run a test in Lunt’s lab. Lunt and his team have developed a new material that can be placed over windows and create solar energy.

“When you’re looking at transparent or clear photo-voltaics, it’s not necessarily a function of power conversion efficiency as it is about using the vast amount of space available for that tech,” Conklin said. “We’re making use of the space that right now is not available for solar energy production. Passive windows are turned into active energy generating windows.”

In other words, transparent solar PV is about not wasting perfectly good real estate in order to supplement a building’s energy requirements.

The solar window technologies make the most of varying strategies of transmitting the energy that the PVs produce to a building’s internal power infrastructure.

Solaria, for instance, hides its wiring within the window’s frame, and the connectors are wired into a newly constructed building’s electrical conduits. These conduits lead to a central power inverter, which converts the solar windows direct current to alternating current that’s used in the electrical grid.

SolarWindow’s technology can come with micro DC-to-AC power inverters, allowing the electricity to be used only in one room with a solar window. Alternately, it can be connected to a distributed micro grid inverter to power a single floor of a building or to a central inverter from which the entire building can draw power.

 

Solaria is already piloting its windows in “a few” buildings and it is working on the first large-scale commercial projects in California and Europe, according to Sharma. Sharma did not disclose the projects.

Solaria has also partnered with Tokyo-based Asahi Glass Co., a global glass manufacturer. Sharma said Asahi intends to sell both windows and a bamboo shade called Sudare with embedded solar cells from Solaria.

“So we’re enabling different glass and curtain wall providers in North America, Europe and Asia to provide products,” Sharma said.

Solar windows will cost about 40% more than conventional windows, but the ROI is achievable in under a year and there’s big demand even though products have yet to ship, the manufacturers say.

“It’s actually very viable and will be even more viable as we approach our product launch,” Conklin said. “It’s in very high demand because right now skyscrapers… don’t have a good way of offsetting energy through renewable energy generation.”

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