Chin Hua solar glass generates electricity, lets (most of) the sun shine in
By Tim Stevens 
posted June 9th 2010 8:57AM
posted June 9th 2010 8:57AM
posted June 9th 2010 8:57AM
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This is the future.
.
@Hazdaz
20 Years maybe?
@Hobsie
There is a LOT of research going on in integrating solar cells into windows. I think 5 - 10 years is a better guesstimate as to when we will see this stuff hits the market. It's not going to be cheap at first, but I could see prices for this stuff dropping rather quickly once it's finally commercialized.
The beauty of solar-cell windows is that they don't have to be all that efficient to still be usable... as long as the costs are not all that much more than regular windows, then simply because of them being ubiquitous makes them very useful. All buildings have windows - and something like a skyscraper can be ALL glass. If they use solar glass for all those thousands of square feet of surface area, they could take quite a few buildings off the grid.
hmmm,wonder if i can get rid of the electric company in the future if i had my solar panels on the roof,solar glass ,windmill and bloom box ?
@n1hmrd I think just the bloom box would suffice... You could actually make money by selling extra electricity back to the power companies.
@n1hmrd The trick is not to get rid of the Electric company, but to use them to your advantage. The problem with most renewable energy source is that they are intermittent. Not many people can really time their electricity consumption base don whether the sun is shinning or it is windy. So you keep your accoutn with the electric company and you generate excess power on sunny, windy days. That excess power sends power out of your house and runs the meter in reverse. Later that night when it is calm, you use the power from the grid. Ultimately the goal is to generate what you use, but stay connected tot he grid.
without the electric company you would need some big-ass batteries.
@RandomGuy hmmm so am i thinking the power input tech wise is possible BUT the tech needed to store the power Ie big ass batteries is not /available?
This is a great idea, you could also use this for skylights in the roof/ceiling.
@admlshake
That's what I was thinking too. You don't need a completely transparent window for your skylights. I would totally buy these today.... for a reasonable price.
@admlshake
I agree, these will be perfect to hold me over until I get the cold fusion generator I'm building in my garage up and running. I have some guys from Russia coming next week to look at it
@admlshake
Don't forget the $50,000 money order you owe them.
Awesome, what's its efficiency for the light it absorbs? Looks like it doesn't absorb much visible light but still delivers power, which is great.
@AaronX
I read somewhere that solar panels can generate about 160 W/qm. So this is window with its maybe 8 W/qm is much less efficient of course. But you could still power some lights with these. Not bad.
@SeeKo In addition you could probably use the windows in those oddball communities where they don't allow solar panels.
@kabloink I don't know of any community that can even ban solar panels in the US. I was told this is an energy independence issue and HOA cannot interfere. For example, in Florida, I can put clothes line in my back yard, put solar panels on the roof (actually we have a solar thermal water heater already). The rule is that I can even put astroturf instead of grass and they cannot say anything because I will be using no water for the lawn. I live in a HOA community!
It's nice idea and might be part of the solution, but the average American draws about a thousand watts continuously (consuming about 24 kilowatt-hours per day), so he'd need at least 500 of these windows to provide his electricity.
@restonthewind
its not supposed to power the entire house just help out
@restonthewind I think the intention of these windows is to provide supplementary power... not to power your household
I always wonder how much power it takes to produce a thing like this
@henkvandervelden Given that it is made from glass, a lot. However if you're building a new house you'd need windows anyway so many the extra for the solar power part isn't too bad.
2W though. That's actually useless.
@Timmmmmm hmm true, well 2 W can almost power my LED light bulb :)
@Timmmmmm Mind you this is just a small prototype, your average house window will be much larger, think about it this way, a double window will be able to power your netbook or even nettop HTPC.
W-----AIT.
WE CAN ACTUALLY USE THIS FOR....
SCREENS! for DEVICES!
GET THE CONNECTION?
THIS IS THE FUTURE!
@ksunwoo6 it would be great also for the windshield of the car!
@ksunwoo6 i doubt it. remember that this would dim and possibly blur the display on your device, and unless you use your device more often in bright sunlight than indoors, i'm betting that you would lose more energy from having to crank up the backlight than you would gain from the solar cell.
@mex remember that, unlike tinting, this would dim your windshield in both directions. not really something you want during night driving.
@maveric101
I know, Im just saying a possibility.
And you don't know the dimness the window will cause
Aren't solar panels for the roof much more efficient and energy producing or am I missing something? These solar type panels would do wonders in a desert environment.
@Abu Abdillah the darker the panel, the more efficient it's going to be. this tech will never compare to the efficient as a normal panel. this is only a reasonable application in situations where you WANT to dim the glass - a car's tinted windows, or skylights as someone said above. it's silly to put it on the screens of portable devices unless you use the device in bright sunlight more often than indoors.
@maveric101 They could make various colors/shades and use it like stained glass. The seams between the glass pieces could hide any connections. Of course, they still need to improve the efficiency, but it would be pretty nifty to have your religious iconography generate most of the power you need to run the church. One day, solar windows in homes could store power in a battery that runs the lights at night. Using a multiplicity of devices like these in homes can reduce the load on the power grid if we rethink the way we wire homes in the first place. One day I'd like to see grid power used only for large institutions, businesses, and heavy industry. Homes should generate all the power they need.
@tessbot "it would be pretty nifty to have your religious iconography generate most of the power you need to run the church"
and god said, let there be light
I have already filed a patent for the iPower. It's a small device, about the size of your credit card. That will power your home forever. How does it work you ask? Magic.
However we at Apple feel it will run much better and just work if we set it to not turn on in any house where it detects any type of device using any Adobe product or Google. Is this unfair? Absolutely not. Is it magic? yes.
How many watt-hours are required to produce one of these windows, delivered and installed on my house? I'm guessing a lot more than two, maybe more like two thousand or twenty thousand (what I consume in a day), even 200,000 (what I consume in a week). At 20,000, assuming I can get the 2 watts 24 hours a day (not), if I need 500 of the windows to provide my electricity, then I must generate electricity this way for over a year to break even. Ten years or longer (maybe a hundred years) is probably closer to the mark.
@restonthewind
I have to ask. Do you need 20,000 Watts (0,8 kWh a day) which would be incredibly low? Or do you need 20,000 Wh (20 kWh a day) which would be outrageously high? So either you live in a tent or you better start doing something about your power consumption.
@SeeKo
"Watt" describes a rate of energy consumption. Consuming 1000 watts continuously for an hour consumes 1000 watt-hours (or 1 kilowatt-hour).
Americans consume roughly 24 kilowatt-hours per day on the average.
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/BoiLu.shtml
24 kilowatt-hours is equivalent to 24,000 watt-hours. I say 20,000 watt-hours per day, because I'm playing with round numbers.
Could I possibly consume half as much, even a quarter as much? Sure. In fact, my consumption presumably is much lower than the average, because I live in a small, well insulated condo with modern appliances. This speculation doesn't change the fact that American households consume so much on the average.
20 kwh a day is not "outrageously" high, unless average American consumption is "outrageous", but I'm not here to judge American power consumption. I'm here to judge the efficacy of these windows as a means of lowering power consumption. I don't see it.
*looks at the related posts section*
@USApple
Referring to the solar-powered iPhone I presume. It could be interesting if the technology works out, seeing how there is glass on both sides of the iPhone 4. I doubt there is enough power generated to keep it running indefinitely, but hey every little bit helps...
now the question is how cheap they can produce it.
some people install panels on their roofs to save money, but they wont get their investment back in a long long time, or even before they die
@LandShark The latest I heard was 10 years near the tropics not accounting for interest on the money out laid but then again not accounting for increases in electricity cost. Still getting better all the time.
@LandShark And keep in mind, all solar technology has an over-optimistic lifespan of 20 years, tops. Good regular windows can last you a lifetime.
Wasn't there just a post about an apple patent for an iPhone using this type of technology? Wonder if it's related.
Great idea but they would have to get the price pretty close to a normal window to make this realistic particularly considering additional wiring costs and the negligible 2w output.
Anything to destroy BP.
This would be great to have these for the windows on a sky scraper. The sears tower has 16100 windows that is 32200 watts. Those windows are bigger than the demo shown so you could expect more power. Imagine if all tall buildings had this technology integrated. that would be a huge amount of power.
Transparent, Touch-Screen, Super-AMOLED, Parralax-Barrier, Double-Glazing, Solar Windows + IR multiple Head-Tracking.
You could be wherever you wanted to be.
EXACTLY.
It's very nice, but unless they start making millions of these overnight to create an economy of scale, and get some competition, you're looking at $5000 a window if you're lucky and a shipping date in 2020.
@democratsarefascists You forget this is chinese. Low cost labor, plus government subsidies and eagerness to become the next superpower ASAP will probably speed things up and keep costs low.
@carlosol No, I didn't forget about that. I was reading just yesterday, in the Financial Times, I think, that that's all going to end soon. China is carrying our debt, so they're looking to stick it to us. It's hard to blame them. But you can bet there will be more markup and fewer bargains once those goods cycle through middlemen. And if the Democrats follow through on their threat to increase their taxes on imports, as they've already done with tires, the days of cheap goods are over.
Unless they did this in double glazing form, you'd lose more energy in heating/cooling than you'd generate.
Would be handy for car sunroofs though. Hook it up to the car battery and it'd probably generate enough power to prevent it going flat.
I submitted a similar idea to the Google 10x10 million project. Mine had them in a stacked configuration to replace solar farms which would allow you to maximize space vs output but also use them in large office buildings.
Isn't it always the case? You have an idea and someone else makes it happen without them even knowing you exist!