Solar Window Breakthrough With Organic PV?

by Pete Danko 

It’s only 5 inches by 5 inches, but it might signal a breakthrough that opens the door—or, better put, window—to a better way to turn glass surfaces into power producers. The development comes from New Energy Technologies, working with scientists from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) on the company’s trademarked SolarWindow technology for generating electricity on see-through glass.

The company said it had fabricated the largest-area organic photovoltaic (OPV) module ever produced at the NREL, creating a working 170-square-centimeter working module. That’s more than 14 times larger than previous OPV devices made at NREL.