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RE: Solar Roof Tiles by ZEP - Elegant Solar powered Roof
This is called 'Building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV)" in short, our research laboratory is working on that too :) we are trying to make transparent solar cells so that can fit into your windows and provide both, sunlight and energy harvesting, eventually our homes would be self-sustaining
How cool, these windows you talk about. I heard of some students from Delft University in Netherlands who created also a solar window; They use some kind of coating to diffract the solar rays to the sides of the window at which small solar collectors are placed. At first they where only able to use colours such as blue, red, green, but since last year they seem to be able to make the transparent coating.
How will the solar window you are working on, work?
Thats a nice idea too, i saw their mechanism but that requires a lot of angle diffraction and it should be accurate in order to be received by the photocollectors. The one we are working on is actually amorphous Silicon based, a very thin (10-20 nm) film of this silicon is almost 90% transparent, so it would not block/diffract/reflect back any light. And, you wont have to worry about cleaning, moving window up or down or changing its angle :) It is kind of already in progress, we are trying to improve transmission and efficiency, which is the main problem right now, the efficiency is maximum 20% by far. If we go up to 45% you can literally use all appliances of a whole room with 1 window
Sounds really cool! When do you expect to have this on the market?
Lolz that would take some time. Actually, we are just university research lab, and we do not actually sell or have shop or plant, we just research, forward it to the companies and they make a plan for product :) So, we are like scientists only. But, i guess it would maximum take a year
Ok Ok :) I suppose an opportunity for some business to get a product on the market when you guys are successful :)