Solar Dyes - Turn skyscrapers into power generators and improve solar panels by 50%

A team of American scientist at MIT, have developed a new way of capturing the Sun’s energy that could radically increase the output of electricity from solar panels by 50%. This new development involves applying a combination of special transparent dyes that coat the glass and redirect light to photovoltaic cells in the frame.

This technique could literally convert hundreds of thousands of glass buildings around the world into power plants. The team of scientists at MIT believes the technology could be available in 3 years.

Professor Marc Baldo, one of the researches at MIT says "it's not far fetched at all." He went on to say "It makes sense to coat the side of tall buildings with these new panes."

The most advanced attempts today at collecting large amounts of solar energy that is converted to electricity involve the use of solar concentrators, which are usually accompanied with large bulky mirrors that track the sun across the sky in order to maximize the amount of solar energy hitting the concentrators.

The downside to this technology is that continuous cooling required of the cells at the center, and each of the concentrators requires a significant amount of space in order to avoid blocking the Sun’s rays from each other.

This new technology does away with the need for mobility as well as the required mirrors that focus the Suns rays.

" How Does This New Technology Work

A mixture of dyes in specific ratios, are applied only to the surface of the glass. This allows a certain level of control over light absorption and emission. "We made it so the light can travel a much longer distance," Mapel says, one of the other team members. "We were able to substantially reduce light transport losses, resulting in a tenfold increase in the amount of power converted by the solar cells."

The future of Windows

According to Professor Baldo, there is a little bit of energy loss with the use of these special transparent dyes but the main benefit is with the cost. You are using smaller amounts of solar cells, but for the same area of solar cells you are getting much more electricity. Therefore, the cost per watt generated per cell area is much, much lower. Professor Baldo also says that this technology could be used to improve the output of existing panels. "You could take this new kind of glass and put it on top of an existing solar cell so the cell still generates electricity but this glass pane with the dye on top captures a certain part of the spectrum and converts it more efficiently than the solar cell would do on its own." He goes on to say that this new technology could improve the conversion of existing panels by 50%.
The system is extremely simple to manufacture, as it only requires the coating of the glass with the combination of these special dyes. Once this becomes a reality this would allow any glass widow to be converted into an energy plant.

According to Professor Baldo "It would look like smoked glass because of the dyes. The coated glass would let through about 10% of the Sun to light up the room, and the remainder would be captured and funneled to the edges to solar cells to generate electricity."

This could be a very significant development for bringing down the cost per watt of converting solar energy into solar electricity.

  1. First solar concentrator coated with transparent dyes absorbs sunlight and transmits it to glass panel edge
  2. High voltage solar cells on edge of glass capture sunlight.
  3. Low voltage solar cells trap light escaping through first panel.
  4. The first panel can also be used alone as a window pane. In the future, glass buildings could produce their own electrical energy.