Newly developed transparent solar panels will allow buildings to not only reduce energy consumption for cooling costs, but it will have the added benefit of generating large amounts of electrical energy that may be used by the building or fed back into the local grid.
The windows of many cars and buildings often are tinted with a film that shuts out unnecessary sunlight, an energy efficiency measure that helps lower heating and cooling costs. Other types of environmentally friendly windows feature a coating of see-through solar cells that transform the windows into mini generators of electricity. But you probably won’t find any windows anywhere that can do both. Not yet anyway. This could be about to change. Chinese scientists have invented a new material that can both block the sun and produce power. They predict that windows outfitted with this product—or even window curtains that have it—eventually could cut the average household’s electric bills by half or more. “We combine both material innovation and optical thin film design to achieve the goal of combining both solar electricity generation and heat insulation in one single film,” said Hin-Lap (Angus) Yip, a professor of materials science and engineering at the South China University of Technology. “Our energy efficiency for the house is kind of double: power generation and power saving.” Constructing a prototype that could simultaneously make electricity and prevent excessive heat required the scientists—who […]
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