Australian Transparent Flexible Solar Panels

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The Australian Monash University developed a new type of transparent solar panels with solid effectivity. These might one generate electricity through your windows.

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Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Humanity is always moving forward and one of the current goals of humanity is to generate electricity more ecologically. This will be very important as the amount of electricity humanity needs is evergrowing and the speed of the increase will only boom once electric cars truly become mainstream. So, where will we acquire the electricity for our technology?

Scientists from Monash University in Australia and other universities like The University of Tokyo, The University of California, Australian Synchrotron, RIKEN may be bringing part of the answer. They cooperated on making a new type of cell that uses Perovskites which increase the range of wavelengths that can be converted into electric energy.

At the same time, these cells are flexible, very thin (just a tenth of the thickness of a human hair), and partially transparent. This would allow us to create tinted windows that not only look good but also generate electric energy.

Such a technology would be amazing for large glass building that would then provide at least part of the energy they use themselves. But it could also find use in electric cars that would recharge whenever they would be standing in the Sun and even use the energy generated during driving giving them improved range. While the amount of energy would be only a few miles every day but multiply this by 365 days per year and in total the numbers actually give you something interesting.

The transparent perovskite cells have a decent effectivity. Common panels usually have an effectivity of 15 – 20 % these perovskite panels have a 17 % effectivity while letting through 10 % of the light. If we aimed for the typical commercial tinted glass they would have an effectivity of 13 – 14 %. This translates to 130 – 140 W per m2. This might not seem like much but think about much more area does your typical glass building have the numbers quickly increase.

Obviously, everything isn't just perfect. The panels are capable of working for about 2 and a half years without almost any degradation and their total lifespan is predicted to be about 11 and a half years. That isn't that great. Changing all the glass on a building every ten years is quite often. But hopefully, before this technology actually goes commercial the lifespan of the panels increases.

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