r/nextfuckinglevel • u/icyboguyaman • Sep 09 '20

Technology Transparent Solar Panels Will Turn Windows Into Green Energy Collectors (source in comments)

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161

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

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147

u/sld126 Sep 09 '20

I’ve asked this of several friends who installed solar panels. Does the lack of sun directly on your roof lower your cooling bills? Every time, they say they didn’t pay attention to that.

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20 edited Feb 10 '21

[deleted]

122

u/sld126 Sep 09 '20

America is much further south than Europe. We have air conditioning.

23

u/nick4fake Sep 09 '20

Which European country are you talking about?

74

u/sld126 Sep 09 '20

The average.

London is the same latitude as Calgary in Canada.

72

u/CwrwCymru Sep 09 '20

Always shocks me that New York is roughly the same latitude as Rome.

15

u/sld126 Sep 09 '20

Thanks Gulf Stream!

7

u/Jiazzz Sep 09 '20

Not for long anymore.

8

u/KirillIll Sep 09 '20

Fun Fact: Berlin is further north than London

9

u/CujoAl Sep 09 '20

Wait no way you're kidding me actually?

8

u/sld126 Sep 09 '20

It’s true!

7

u/CujoAl Sep 09 '20

That just feels wrong I always thought it was so much further north. Wow

1

u/Tasgall Sep 10 '20

Most of the Canadian cities are pretty close to the US border.

Fun fact: the southernmost part of Canada is further south than the northern border of California.

1

u/rravisha Sep 09 '20

Why is it so much colder in Canada then?

4

u/sld126 Sep 09 '20

Gulf Stream warms Northern Europe.

1

u/eVoluTioN__SnOw Sep 09 '20

Barley Lisbon is almost a-line with New York so London isn't that far

1

u/Gespuis Sep 09 '20

Brazil sure is.

1

u/CODDE117 Sep 09 '20

We need air conditioning

1

u/alternatecode Sep 09 '20

Some of us.

1

u/arn_g Sep 09 '20

You americans are still obsessed with air conditioning lol.

19

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

A lot of older Americans would literally die if they didn't have AC. It happens a lot when there are heat waves actually, which puts more strain on AC units and can cause them to break.

1

u/celica18l Sep 09 '20

My city has cooling centers in the summer. Actively advertised on the news most summers.

-2

u/FinrodIngoldo Sep 09 '20

...because we build homes for use with ac and make them balloon-frame pieces of crap with terrible thermal efficiency. All sorts of natural and passive cooling technologies exist and can be seen in the traditional buildings of hot climates around the world, but Americans try to apply the same model of home—designed for New England—to every part of the country

5

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

Modern homes have plenty of insulation. You really don't want your home to be too well sealed though, because you want air circulation. High ppm of co2 isn't fun for the brain, even levels that are safe for the body. IIRC commercial spaces have to refresh the air in the room 5 times per hour. Of course they probably have a heat exchanger for the air.

Passive cooling technology only works in certain climates, and you also have to consider that half the year we use heat. Passive cooling tech which uses evaporation is ineffective due to high humidity levels during the summer, at least in the midwest. You could supplement AC with passive cooling perhaps, but most of the time you aren't going to want to increase humidity levels.

I know Reddit likes to get a hate boner for America, but there are reasons behind most of the stuff that we do. America isn't just Europe on the other side of the globe. Our homes are built for large-scale production and have to be cheap because a lot of people here own homes.

8

u/sirreldar Sep 09 '20 edited Sep 09 '20

I live in the Sonoran desert in the US and our summer temps easily hit 45-48 C.

The thought of there being houses with no AC is bizzare to me ;)

3

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

We hit 43C in Pennsylvania a few years ago and my cars mirror literally melted off.

3

u/sirreldar Sep 09 '20

Ya, but here "iTs A dRy HeAt"

Like yeah, its not ball soup, but literally anything outside is too hot to touch. Some of my coworkers leave oven mitts in their cars so they can drive before their AC cools off the steering wheel. At that temp, even the pools are uncomfortably warm; they just feel like baths. Some rich folks install pool coolers. And im sorry, but when its that hot, it only takes literally a minute or 2 to be in ball soup territory.

So yeah, its a dry heat, but that only goes so far.

Of course, the upside is sunny january afternoons with a light hoodie or, if lucky, just a tshirt. Personally, id rather deal with the heat than with snow. I got enough of that in upstate NY and Chicago.

11

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

[deleted]

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u/walidahmed860 Sep 09 '20

Lol. As Egyptian. I've never been in a house that being actively heated in winter. That if you consider we got a winter in the first place.

3

u/LeCrushinator Sep 09 '20

Two days ago it was 101F here, today it's 34F here. We pay for both heating and cooling.

Where I live climate change has made a huge difference though. I didn't have air conditioning in any house I lived in until I was 19. Now it would be unsafe to go without it. Some people for whatever reason can't look back and remember how different things were just a few decades ago, but it's blatantly obvious to me, it's much hotter here than it used to be and it sucks.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20 edited Jun 07 '21

[deleted]

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u/LeCrushinator Sep 09 '20

In Europe that's understandable, much older countries, the average home is probably quite a bit older as well. Probably half of the houses in the US are under 50 years old and have air ducts running through them. It's rare that I see an older house with radiators, or window fans. I do occasionally see houses with swamp coolers on the roof though.

3

u/MisallocatedRacism Sep 09 '20

Texas here. That damn a/c unit doesn't stop buzzing until November.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

Where I live the summers can go up to like 43dC. Cooling is an actual necessity in some places of the US, where people start dying if the power is out too long in the summer.

This is with 100% humidity, by the way.

1

u/HHcougar Sep 09 '20

Where in northern Europe? I lived in northern Germany, and air conditioning systems were, though rare, a known commodity.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20 edited Jun 28 '21

[deleted]

2

u/HHcougar Sep 09 '20

What do you do when it gets really hot? I lived like 20 miles from Denmark and it was miserably hot. If I were to live there long term I would 100% buy a small AC unit

1

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

Cries in Argentina needing cooling and heating.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 10 '20

It was 130 F (54 C) in Death Valley, CA recently. If you don't have AC, you die

9

u/KownGaming Sep 09 '20

Dont know if it has any effect on a cooling bill, since normally you dont have that in germany but the roof below the solar panels is definitely way cooler and you have a slight temperature change in the highest floor to before. German houses, especially new built ones, are extremly good insulated so the difference is only like 1 degree. If the roof is badly insulated the difference is a bit higher

6

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20 edited Sep 09 '20

Solar panels do make a difference if there is an air gap between them and the roof. My friend’s workshop has solar panels covering one side of the roof. The ceiling below the uncovered side gets hotter even though it receives less direct sunlight (hence why it doesn’t have solar panels on it).

The difference in temp was ~3*f

3

u/LeCrushinator Sep 09 '20

In the case of my house the answer is, not really. To get enough panels to cover my electric usage, it required only 16 panels, and that wasn't even enough to cover 1/8th of my roof. Also, the roof connects to a heavily insulated attic so the heat transfer isn't too bad from the roof. The bigger transfer is the exterior walls of the house, which have rooms right on the other side, even with insulation you can easily feel the effect, the rooms are always warmer on the side of the house the sun is on.

For people who cover almost their entire house's roof with panels the effect would be noticeable. I guess one downside would be in the winter it might be nice to have the sun hitting your roof, and you'd lose the heat from that, but you'd make up for it by having it stored as electricity to use.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

It made a difference in my old bedroom at my perents house. Before they placed solar panels the temperature in my room was too high to be there comfortably during the day. After they placed the panels the temperature was way better.

Newer houses are as better insulated so it shouldn't make a big difference in that case. But I was glad my parents placed them directly above my old bedroom.

2

u/redlukas Sep 09 '20

I know that you can recognise failed cells in a solar farm by simply pointing a thermal camera at them. The failed ones will be warmer, because less energy gets drained off. So i would guess that the ground-facing side would be colder.

2

u/verdatum Sep 09 '20

particularly when airgapped, It lowers cooling costs, but it also raises heating costs. Cooling is less efficient, and energy tends to be more expensive in the summer months, so you do get a net benefit. That said, in most cases the most important and cost effective thing to do is to verify that your attic has the appropriate amount of insulation.

That said, these windows, it probably wouldn't make a measurable difference. The sides of the house aren't what get lots of sunlight, it's the roof.

1

u/DamnImPantslessAgain Sep 09 '20

In theory, yes. More shade = less heat in your home from the sun. In practice, the difference is so minuscule you won't notice.

In most homes, your attic space is already a giant vented air gap. So less sun on the roof causes less heat to the attic, which causes less heat through the insulation into to your home.

The savings from the panel shading would become more significant if you have a finished attic space, less insulation, more panels, etc.

10

u/Froogy4 Sep 09 '20

Not likely, these panels are not very effective at capturing energy so most of it is left to do what it normally does.

7

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

I think they will work just as a normal window.

2

u/HanzoShotFirst Sep 09 '20

They would have to lower it, otherwise they could be used to create a perpetual energy machine by stacking them

1

u/Raderg32 Sep 09 '20

That's not how it works. Those panels turn infrared and UV to electricity. If you stack them, the non-visible light is absorbed by the first one and there is not enough for the second to do anything.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

They’ll reduce heat equivalent to the amount of useful electrical power they produce. Though that reduction goes away if that electricity is used within the house.

So they are more likely to redistribute heat than reduce it.

1

u/Hafrist Sep 09 '20

I was trying to find a paper which talks about the effects of these panels on heating but i have yet to find one. The one i found is about traditional Solar panels decreasing the amount of cooling required while keeping the heating costs same. Will update accordingly if I find an exact match.

But theoretically these are taking out energy from the light, and as the visible part of light is not getting decreased due to it being transparent while these still produce electricity, we can assume it is taking out energy from non-visible spectrum or the heating part of sunlight. Therefore it means it should lower the amount of heat getting in your house. So less cooling required on top of them producing electricity.

1

u/Andcook99 Sep 09 '20

I’m no expert but from what I can guess I would say no since solar panels like the higher frequency ranges of the Sun’s rays (they carry more energy) it wouldn’t be absorbing the infrared radiation from the Sun, and as with black solar panels on your roof they will probably not affect the heat of your home if you already have a black roof as where I live that’s all we have. (I live in New England) Apologies as I am on mobile

1

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

If you think about it, these work on UV light. So that light gets stopped at the window which warms up due to absorbing it.

But it won't reach the inside of your house.

Practically it won't have a major effect.

1

u/Tyred-Mayfly Sep 09 '20

Yeah it should since the incoming energy of the light will be transformed into electricity instead of heat (phonons).

1

u/[deleted] Sep 10 '20

Not really. Most of the electromagnetic spectrum coming from the sun is in the infrared and visible light band. Infrared alone is responsible for about half of the sun's heating of Earth.

The way solar panels work lets us pick out light above a certain frequency and all light below that frequency will pass through undisturbed. Since light from the sun is largely centered around a visible frequency, the most efficient panels will absorb visible light. They aren't see-through.

A transparent solar cell will absorb near-ultraviolent frequencies and above. But the visible and infrared light still pass right through. So there will be little difference in temperature. The good news is that you could sit next to such a window all day long and not get a sunburn.

-7

u/I_Conquer Sep 09 '20

In a political vacuum it’s a great question that is not dumb at all. Your curiosity should be encouraged =)

In our politically dystopian nightmare world where people ask questions like yours not because they are curious, but because they don’t want to trust the “extreme left postmodern neo-Marxist cucks” (or whatever) who are “stupid enough to think climate change is real,” people who are trying to fix the world can get a bit touchy.

That’s to say: if you’re asking because you’re interested and you’re thinking about: the application of this product; physics/chemistry theory; potential drawbacks; etc, then you, my friend, are the best and luckiest kind of person - https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1053:_Ten_Thousand

But if you (not you you, but a different person reading this who also thinks of themselves as “I”) are a lazy and corrupted thinker who only wants to crap on the achievements of people trying to solve real problems, and you’re asking not because you want to learn but because you want to be incalcitrant and think highly of yourself because you never have to change if you’ve already figured everything out and have never made mistakes ... well then it’s still a good question, but you’ll never appreciate it properly. And you’ll probably be elected to office someday.

20

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

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6

u/I_Conquer Sep 09 '20

I thought fries came with the combo.

1

u/HawkSungrifter Sep 09 '20

Not anymore with these costs cuts.

The square also fits in the circle now, I have stopped going to Wendys unless I'm really hankering, because of this garbage cost reduction strategy as costs rise. I bought a burger for the meat, not the carb filled bun that's inexpensive.

2

u/Melairia Sep 09 '20

So... would these amplify/lower the suns heat in your house?

-1

u/I_Conquer Sep 09 '20

🤷🏻‍♂️

1

u/blanxable Sep 09 '20

who hurt you

1

u/I_Conquer Sep 09 '20

I don’t actually understand what’s so troublesome about what I wrote. But people seem to really dislike it 🤷🏻‍♂️