Transparent Solar Concentrators

After going through many news stories to cover in this post, I came across this one, it’s basically a transparent solar panel (see picture 1). Although there have been successes at this in the past, this one is completely transparent. The earlier ones were colored, and nobody wanted to look through colored glass. This research was led by Richard Lunt at the Michigan State University.

                                          -The revolutionary new solar concentrator (picture 1)

"No one wants to sit behind colored glass," Lunt said in a press release. "It makes for a very colorful environment, like working in a disco. We take an approach where we actually make the luminescent active layer itself transparent.”

Now this is a big step forward in our evolution. No longer must we use navy blue solar panels to get electricity that will not damage the environment. Although it currently has an efficiency of 1%, researchers stated that it will get to 5%, and that it’s completely possible, while non-transparent ones, which literally bathe the room in colorful light, get around 7%.

They have also stated that it will be ‘Affordable’ and that if you change your phone’s display it would most certainly get you from a few minutes to a couple of hours of extra battery life. It could also be used on large buildings that have many glass windows to generate some additional power.

“Scientifically, a transparent solar panel is something of an oxymoron. Solar cells, specifically the photovoltaic kind, make energy by absorbing photons (sunlight) and converting them into electrons (electricity). If a material is transparent, however, by definition it means that all of the light passes through the medium to strike the back of your eye. This is why previous transparent solar cells have actually only been partially transparent — and, to add insult to injury, they usually they cast a colorful shadow too. To get around this limitation, the Michigan State researchers use a slightly different technique for gathering sunlight. Instead of trying to create a transparent photovoltaic cell (which is nigh impossible), they use a transparent luminescent solar concentrator (TLSC). The TLSC consists of organic salts that absorb specific non-visible wavelengths of ultraviolet and infrared light, which they then luminesce (glow) as another wavelength of infrared light (also non-visible). This emitted infrared light is guided to the edge of plastic, where thin strips of conventional photovoltaic solar cell convert it into electricity. [Research paper: DOI: 10.1002/adom.201400103- "Near-Infrared Harvesting Transparent Luminescent Solar Concentrators"] (see picture 2)”

                                           - This is how it works, Jesus Christ this is confusing (picture 2)

Now that’s from the website, I don’t understand more than half of it, but it sounds pretty scientific, so I guess that it’s interesting. Richard Lunt also said "We can tune these materials to pick up just the ultraviolet and the near infrared wavelengths that then 'glow' at another wavelength in the infrared. It opens a lot of area to deploy solar energy in a non-intrusive way," Lunt continued. "It can be used on tall buildings with lots of windows (see picture 3)

-Imagine if all this was covered in the stuff? (picture 3)

or any kind of mobile device that demands high aesthetic quality like a phone or e-reader. Ultimately we want to make solar harvesting surfaces that you do not even know are there." That kind of simplifies it, and as I said, it would be very useful to use on your mobile phone, your computer, your kindle e-reader even, it has a lot of useful things and it cannot be wasted. I see no downside to this, it is breakable, but let’s hope that it’s not very expensive. You can literally charge your phone and text at the same time! Come on guys, does it get any better than that? Something that charges your phone and you don’t even see it?