What if every window in the financial district could be transformed into a translucent solar power generator, powering anything from the lights to the elevators in the buildings? A company called XsunX is currently developing technologies to help achieve environmnetally sustainable power options. Their first development is a solar power generator called Power Glass. When the windows are exposed to light, they begin to convert the solar energy into electricity:
Power Glassâ„¢ represents a new breed of solar cell design that balances solar cell efficiencies and manufacturing costs with broad applications and uses. The Company believes that these design, manufacturing, and application efficiencies may provide significant efficiency-to-cost gains over conventional opaque solar cells. This gain in efficiency-to-cost is based on Company estimates of Power Glassâ„¢ solar cells operating at as much as 50%, or half, the efficiency of conventional opaque amorphous solar cells yet costing significantly less to produce.
This may be a company and technology to keep an eye on as our energy demands grow higher and higher.
4 comments
All I can say is… wow. Maybe I’m just a dork, but stuff like that renews my (little) faith in humanity. Technology and innovation are here. Now all we need to do is get market forces and political will on side.
Just imagine how much electricity the Toronto Hydro building could generate with something like that. 🙂
Please tell me more about the glass for solar power. I am in South Africa and would very much like to experiment with such idea. Where can I get the glass and what do I do?? I guess. Tx
Richard: the technology is still in development, and will not actually by sold on the market by XsunX. They will be licensing glass-making companies to produce and sell it to developers. If you follow the link in the post, you’ll find a wealth of information on their website!
This solar glass intigued me the first time I heard about it. This is clearly one the answers to inexpensive reliable energy sources that the world has been serching for. For every single glass skyscraper and every single office building to produce it’s own electricity and maybe some extra would be an extrodinary feat of humanity. We need the politicans on board as well as the buisiness community. As soon as it is a viable process the powers that be should not hesitate to inact legislation. Keep on fighting the good fight and VOTE GREEN!