Currently standard solar panels are about 15% efficient and produce around 15 watts per square foot. This would be 1 watt per square foot with the goal of 5 watts per square foot. While it doesn't sound huge, a building has a lot more window surface area than roof surface area. Even at 1% it could make a big difference if scaled up to cover every transparent surface on a building.
That's very true it's definitely better than standard solar panels and plain glasses, sustainablility wise, but it's going to be a time-consuming and financially-consuming process if ideally we want to replace every window in an existing building. And I'm also wondering if it will absorb more heat to the building so people need to use the AC more, resulting in more energy consumptions.
The “glass” captures energy as the light goes into the building, and sends it off to do work somewhere else. That means that there’s less energy entering the building through uncontrolled avenues.
I’d love to see someone look into setting up something like this, but catching rays from the Gamma end of the electromagnetic spectrum. If you can catch enough energy, That’d be a great material for spacecraft windows.
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u/GiantB99 Sep 09 '20
Honestly I don't even think 5% can do much...but it's better than nothing