Your Windows Could Soon Generate Electricity Thanks To This Solar Breakthrough

The cost of electricity is going through the roof, and you might think about installing solar panels on your roof to combat these inflating prices. However, it's easy for first-time homeowners to make mistakes with their new solar panels. Is your roof big enough (and secure enough) to support all the panels you need? A recent innovation might preclude the need for installing solar panels this way: solar window panes.

In May of this year, researchers at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore (NTU Singapore) revealed that they invented a new form of solar cell that is 10,000 times thinner than a strand of hair. Because it's so thin, this new breed of solar panel — made out of a material with a crystalline structure known as perovskite — manages to be transparent and convert solar power to electricity. Admittedly, prior rival perovskite solar cells are more efficient, as are many commercially-available residential solar cells , but what NTU's solar panels lack in energy generated per cell they make up for in sheer utility. 

According to the research paper published in ACS Energy Letters, the new perovskite panels are so transparent you could install them on top of windows without significantly altering visibility. Granted, these solar panels reduce transparency from around 70% or 80% to around 41%, which sounds like a lot, but comparatively sunglasses tend to reduce transparency anywhere between 8% to 18%. These new solar panels are ripe for integrating with cars and wearables, as well. Imagine charging your electric vehicle with solar panels while you're still driving it. Transparent panels probably won't provide enough energy to keep the car running indefinitely, but it could put a reasonable dent in your electricity bill.

The more engineers work with solar panels, the more we learn about them. For instance, researchers recently learned you can install solar panels near power cables with little interference, which frees up a ton of real estate we didn't know existed. As for perovskite, efficiency goes deeper than just converting more solar energy into electricity.

Unlike traditional solar panels made out of silicon, NTU Singapore's perovskite panels (and all perovskite solar cells in general) can draw power from indirect or even diffused sunlight. This ability is a huge advantage in metropolises such as Singapore, where direct sunlight is at a premium. Furthermore, the leader of the study,  Annalisa Bruno, claims NTU Singapore's perovskite cells can essentially tune out certain wavelengths of light, absorbing the ones engineers want and leaving the rest untouched for presentation's sake. Oh, and the panels should be easy to manufacture, although they do require a specific thermal evaporation process (materials are heated in a vacuum chamber until they evaporate and form a thin film) to control transparency.

While new perovskite solar panels are in the early phases of development, the scientists involved are confident that if installed on top of the windows of glass-fronted office towers, the solar panels could generate hundreds of megawatt-hours of electricity each year. Bruno has already filed a patent for the perovskite solar panels, and if other companies can validate the special process used to create the solar film, we might see self-sufficient buildings in the near future.