MIT researchers develop new solar power windows

MIT researchers develop new solar power windows

By MB-BigB

In a press release, MIT researchers have reported that they have developed solar power
concentrators that can be used to turn windows into solar panels.
Their new technique paints the window glass with a mixture of two or
more tranparent organic dyes that absorbs and transports the light to
solar cells that are positioned around the edges of the glass. By
using the dyes, the amount of electricity that could be produced by
each of the solar cells is increased by about 10 times, with much lower
amounts of solar cells and silicon needed

Organic solar concentrators collect and focus different colors of sunlight

The head of the team, Professor Marc Baldo, says that it’s simple to
manufacture and could be implemented within three years. While this
technique has been around since the 70’s, the earlier versions lost too
much of the sunlight while transporting it to the edges. The MIT
technique used some of the same processes used in lasers and
light-emitting diodes so that the light can travel of much longer
distances. They also believe that this process can be used with
existing solar cell systems to increase the efficiency of current
systems 20-30%. Participants in the research are starting a company,
Covalent Solar, to commercialize and improve the technology.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: solar, windows, energy, electricity