
Transparent Solar Panels Will Turn Windows into Green Energy Collectors - hmhrex
https://www.the-open-mind.com/transparent-solar-panels-will-turn-windows-into-green-energy-collectors/
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driverdan
This is blogspammed PR that gets it wrong. This is a research project that is
nowhere near production with many "ifs". Vertical surfaces don't make a lot of
sense for solar since they get limited exposure. They'd have to be incredibly
cheap to make financial sense.

Research like this comes out every day. 90% of the time it's not possible to
make it practical.

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amluto
A large fraction of the cost of solar is installation — the panels are
actually a minor expense in most rooftop installations. So using windows,
which are being installed anyway, isn’t all that crazy. It will work best on a
South-facing window at a high Northern latitude or vice versa.

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krageon
> the panels are actually a minor expense in most rooftop installations

I have had the questionable delight of seeing a specification made for a
rooftop installation recently, so I know this is not universally true (even if
you use an older type of solar panel, which is cheaper).

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amluto
The online price of the panels on my roof is under 1/3 of the total cost of
the system. The inverter and related hardware is much less than that.

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chrisco255
Office towers seem like a natural fit for this and have a huge surface area to
collect solar energy from! Hope this makes it out of the lab and into
commercial buildings in quick fashion.

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izzydata
My house has 4 walls and a roof to cover solar panels in before it makes sense
to make my windows solar panels. Unless it is one of those skyscrapers where
the entire exterior is glass.

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mabbo
Just from a physics point of view, I have a hard time believing this. Isn't a
large portion of the energy coming from the sun photons in the visible
wavelengths? If the solar panel is transparent, it's allowing those photos
through and not collecting energy.

Or am I wrong, and most of the energy is in the non-visible range?

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vbuwivbiu
most of it is in the blue i think, but from the surface of the earth this
range is scattered so the next peak is in the green-yellow. I'm sure there's
UV we could capture with windows

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vkou
1\. Utility solar will _always_ be cheaper then distributed solar.

2\. The biggest limiting factor on renewable adoption is cost.

3\. We will never run out of space to put solar panels.

The last thing I need is a pile of extensive, over-complicated, version 1.0
technology and all of its electrical wiring, etc crammed into my windows.

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newnewpdro
> 1\. Utility solar will always be cheaper then distributed solar.

Utilities are often privatized monopolies these days, that's not at all a safe
assumption. Look what happened with California and Enron.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron#California's_deregulatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron#California's_deregulation_and_subsequent_energy_crisis)

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amluto
Also, look at the hilariously high cost of electricity in PG&E territory. If
you can deal with storage and peak loads, on-site generation is competing with
20-40 cents / kWh charged by PG&E, not the vastly lower prices that PG&E pays
for generation.

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newnewpdro
Downed PG&E transmission lines are also implicated in causing fires in the
state, just another argument in favor of decentralized, on-site generation.

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FennNaten
This lacks data. We'd need to know the efficiency, life expectancy and energy
production cost of the cells in order to know if this is really interesting.
If you need more energy to produce the cells than the amount they'll provide
throughout their lifetime, it's not worth it. Sure, it looks cool, but it's
too soon to publicize.

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znpy
Many negative comments. While this might not yield the desired results right
now it’s still good that different approaches are being explored and
evaluated.

Also, as for many things (think gorilla glass) the right application might not
be the one for which this technology has been developed originally.

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jwcacces
What is up with this site that disables selecting text and the right click
menu?

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jolmg
F12 > Console, then run:

    
    
        document.onmousedown = null
        document.body.onselectstart = null
        document.ondragstart = null
        document.onselectstart = null
        document.oncontextmenu = null

