Special transparent dyes coating glass or plastic panes concentrate the Sun’s rays, guiding them to solar-voltaic cells lining the edges, allowing a window to act as a solar panel with 10 times the electricity generation capacity of solar cells, by current standards. The ‘organic solar concentrator’ (OSC) system also reduces cost, by reducing the surface area that needs to be coated by solar-voltaic cells and by eliminating the need for large concentrating mirrors and sun-tracking mechanisms.
According to the journal Science, where the findings were published:
Light is absorbed by the coating and reemitted into waveguide modes for collection by the solar cells. We report single- and tandem-waveguide organic solar concentrators with quantum efficiencies exceeding 50% and projected power conversion efficiencies as high as 6.8%. The exploitation of near-field energy transfer, solid-state solvation, and phosphorescence enables 10-fold increases in the power obtained from photovoltaic cells, without the need for solar tracking.
The Economist is using the term ‘luminescent solar concentrator’, and notes that the work reported by Michael Currie and Jonathan Mapel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is being researched elsewhere as well, and is related to the standard functioning of fiber optic technologies, which concentrate light and contain it within a conductive glass or plastic fiber. The OSC system conducts light toward the edges of the glass or plastic pane, trapping photons within the pane, causing it to seek out the high-efficiency solar-voltaic cells at the panel’s edge.
There are technical complications with perfecting the OSC system for harvesting solar energy. The dyes capture and concentrate the incoming sunlight, but an excess of dye molecules may prevent a quantity of light from reaching the circumferential solar cells, either by re-absorbing the light or by allowing heat to accumulate and losing the energy through that concentration of heat on the dyed surface.
The EE Times reports that the “edge-mounted” solar cells could receive light concentrated as much as 40 times. With the extreme heightening of efficiency, and the attendant reduction of costs, related to the new panels’ lack of need for mirrors or solar tracking mechanisms, the MIT advance could revolutionize the role of solar power in the global energy economy.
The dye-based solar concentrators could be on the commercial market within three years, distributed widely and helping homeowners and businesses establish productive capacity in linking up with the spreading renewables grid. Consumers with solar and wind-generation capacity can earn money on energy fed back into the local electricity grid.
The solar concentrating dye-coating can also be applied to exiting solar cells, heightening their light-capturing capability by as much as 30%, according to the MIT team. Marc Baldo, an MIT engineer, says “We think that ultimately this approach will allow us to nearly double the performance of existing solar cells for minimal added cost.”
While obstacles to containing and harvesting the full amount of energy captured by the dyes are an issue, Baldo’s team went far beyond previous attempts at increasing the efficiency of solar cells with the dye-retransmit method, by coating only the surface of a glass pane with the dyes, mimicking techniques used to improve the efficiency of lasers, which also contain and bounce light to intensify the retransmission of light at the other end of the contained space.
15 Responses to Transparent Dyes Allow Windows to Act as Super-powerful Solar Panels
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Great idea. But let’s calculate the cost in greenhouse gas emissions for manufacturing these complex panels, including disposal of the haz mats generated, as well as the cost of retrofitting existing installations and transporting the replaced materials to landfills. These high tech solutions are sort of like going to the moon; clever and fun but ultimately useless in the time scale of the likely survival of most of the species on earth. We are rapidly approaching the point where we cannot afford to adopt new technologies as our econony and way of life collapse. We need to focus on immediate, practical, proven energy saving technologies now (like conservation, buried DC transmission lines, wind power and the like) in order that these kind of innovations can be supported in the future. A new generation of students needs to get the “gee whiz” feeling from appropriately scaled technologies. Looks like MIT is not getting it right philosophically, and as usual, is following the money, which is thing disconnected from the health of our planet.
I think it’s fair to say there is a vested economic interest in bringing this sort of high-technology to market. But the issue is not strictly philosophical, I think. MIT works on a dizzying array of technological innovations, including some which aim to improve existing technologies.
The technology involved in the OSC-type solar panels will be less expensive to produce and will involve significantly fewer carbon emissions than existing standards in solar cell production. The cost for coating existing cells with the light-concentrating dyes is minimal compared to retrofitting existing solar farms with experimental technologies, and the value of a zero-pollution method for harvesting energy goes far beyond the current “interim fixes” like “clean coal” or increased exploitation of Canada’s oil sands.
Conservation is a wonderful and necessary component of a healthy energy economy, but MIT can’t force consumers to do it, nor can the government. Backing this sort of technology will help speed it to market, and will likely attract money to other, perhaps as yet unimagined, cutting edge technologies.
There’s a company already producing applique solar collector films:
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/080626/clth039.html?.v=101
If office buildings were build to reflect on each other,
as in \_/ you’d have positive energy generation from
their windows.
Responding to Aurum79 – Why don’t we all just give up now. What about the greenhouse gas emissions for manufacturing these complex wind turbines, including disposal of the haz mats generated, as well as the cost.
You obviously could not get into MIT
Rapid development and deployment of this technology would be advantageous to anyone interested in some semblance of energy independence. Just the thought of a more economic and efficient solar panel gives me hope that our generation may finally see viable alternative energy become a reality for the common man.
This is some of the best news I’ve heard in years.
Pink Solar Cells Can Produce Power at 25% of Current Cost
As environmental groups, lobbyists and the general public push for more environmentally friendly industrial practices, scientists are finding innovative ways to bring down costs and increase the efficiency of renewable resources. The dye-sensitive solar cells (DSSC), with a pinkish sheen, now being developed at Ohio State University, are an example of the type of engineering innovation that could bring about a genuine green-power revolution…
WIND power? Seriously?
Freaking joke, that one. If we want power based on a (relatively) renewable energy source that doesn’t harm the environment anywhere near the levels of oil, gas, or for God’s sakes coal, AND a source that can actually supply enough power to meet the needs of our ridiculous society here in the states (not by any means that I think our power demands are “wrong” – I’m right there sucking it down with the rest of them) then I’m pretty sure nuclear is currently the best answer. (environmentalists love that one)
Proven to be cleaner in both the short term and long term than any of the current power sources, and also proven to generate the output required. Properly handled, generates less of the horrible “greenhouse gasses” that are hailed by the media and ignorant masses to be destroying our planet. (not that they’re not a problem, but don’t I don’t believe everything I read about Britney in the rags, why should something “sciencey” automatically gain credibility?)
Either that, or we need to get started building a BOATload more hoover damns…
Solar collection technology has to be the long term solution, I’m not sure how we can even argue against that.
If you’re worried about the environment, don’t use ethanol, completely energy negative. And for sure don’t buy a hybrid unless you plan on driving it the next 10 years, in which case it might equal out against a used geo metro…
I’d almost rather argue about whether there’s a God or not, than talk to someone about the “environment” these days. I think religious advocates may have more sense about them…
Keeping to facts is helpful: nuclear energy is not cleaner than all alternative fuels; in fact, the risk of release of radiation from spent nuclear fuel and from components of nuclear plants than are retired from use is such that used materials were required by law to be 100% hermetically sealed against seepage for 10,000 years, until a federal judge ruled that the science supported a minimum of 1 million years.
Nuclear will not help us speed the transition, because it will take decades to get a fleet of new plants up and running. And, considering the economic woes we’re facing, who’s going to pay for 10,000 to 1 million years of fool-proof storage?
The Hoover Dam, along with other major dam projects, when adjust for inflation, has never made a profit. The cost for these massive industrial undertakings is paid by the taxpayer, i.e. you. Considering we now have means of avoiding environmental devastation, like solar and wind power, we have to consider that industry that produces a clean solution with minimal footprint, is the best choice.
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