Solar windows could cut building energy use by half

By Giles Parkinson on 26 March 2012

Ideas for generating electricity from the massive curtains of windows that adorn modern buildings are coming thick and fast. Justin Norrie from The Conversation wrote about one idea last week that we published, Dyesol is continuing its developments with Pilkington in the US, and industry researcher NanoMarkets recently identified 20 firms pursuing similar technologies.

Another one to watch is the development at Edit Cowan University in Western Australia of solar windows that are apparently cheap to make and could reduce a building’s energy needs by nearly 50 per cent. And, while most Building Integrated Photovoltaic solutions offer less than 50 per cent transparency, this technology lets all the light through.

The technology has been developed by a team led by Professor Kamal Alameh, the director of the Electron Science Research Institute (ESRI) at ECU, who claims to have harnessed the optical properties of nano-particles to develop a breakthrough in electricity- generating window panes.

Rather than using tinted film on the surface of the glass, or sandwiched between two layers, Alameh’s team has placed a continuous layer of nano-particles between two sheets of glass. These nano-particles allow visible light waves through but prevents the entry of both ultra violet and infrared light, which is instead re-directed to the edge of the window pane, where it is collected by photovoltaic cells built into the window frame and converted into electricity.