New Energy Technologies Advances SolarWindow Product
COLUMBIA, Md. — On May 12, Columbia-based New Energy Technologies announced researchers have successfully achieved faster fabrication time, improved transparency and a two-fold increase in power conversion efficiency in the product development of the company’s electricity-generating glass windows.
Researchers achieved this feat using a patent-pending breakthrough that allows for production of large-scale, mini-module SolarWindow devices, which would help in commercial deployment of the world’s first-of-its-kind glass window that can generate electricity.
To generate electricity on glass windows, New Energy researchers spray ultra-small, see-through solar cells onto glass surfaces. The spray-on technique has gone through several prototypes created by scientists working with New Energy Technologies under a sponsored research agreement at the University of South Florida.
The technology is now in advanced product development, and the latest spray-on techniques have reduced fabrication time from several days to only a few hours, improved the transparency that created a window-tint affect and achieved an appealing coating on the glass. These findings resulted from improvements that control fabrication of various layers of coatings on glass, which make up the SolarWindow product. The multiple layers allow the glass to absorb the sun’s energy, generate electricity and direct the electricity for collection and use.
“The latest breakthrough is an exciting testament to our ongoing efforts as we continuously work to improve the quality and performance of our SolarWindow mini-modules,” said John A. Conklin, president and CEO of New Energy Technologies, in a statement. “Moving forward, we remain devoutly focused on producing large surface area prototypes which are compatible with high-speed production methods, important to commercialization of SolarWindow.”
This news comes on the footsteps of the March announcement that New Energy Technologies entered into Phase II of its Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is also working on the advancement of the SolarWindow technology.
The company hopes SolarWindow technology will eventually be deployed in an estimated 85 million commercial buildings and homes in America. SolarWindow is a building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) product; in general, BIPV products strive to achieve compound annualized growth of more than 41 percent through 2016, according to Pike Research.