For the average person, the typical image of solar power is large, opaque, expensive panels mounted on a rooftop, or rows of tilted panels on a solar farm, but a new generation of transparent, liquid solar coatings may soon be powering cities by coating the glass windows of tall buildings and skyscrapers. 

 

Looking back at the early 2000s, the price of a solar panel hovered around $4.00 per watt and solar skeptics strongly believed the price could never drop below $1.00 per watt due to prohibitive material costs. They also believed the land area required was too vast for solar to become a large-scale power source. At best, solar power was for the remotest of places, and the most affluent enviro-zealots.

 

Fast forward to 2016, the cost of photovoltaic solar panels has dropped dramatically with the most recent record-breaking panel priced at $0.55 per watt. Last year was notable as solar was added to another U.S. home or business every three minutes. No doubt this is an exciting time for solar and many believe it is the power source of the future, but solar power still accounts for less than 1 percent of the country’s energy consumption. 

 

How can this trend scale to the degree necessary to beat climate change? 

In MIT’s 2015 report ‘The Future of Solar Energy’ researchers declare ‘solar electricity generation is one of very few low-carbon energy technologies with the potential to grow to very large scale’, and advocates the development of new technologies that maximize the opportunities the sun’s energy provides.

 

Although a silicon solar panel bought today will perform light years ahead of one bought 20 years ago, it is still heavy, rigid, and generally limited to rooftops and solar farms. According to the latest predictions, about 192,000 square miles of solar panels are needed to provide renewable power for the entire Earth. This requirement is roughly equivalent to the land mass of Spain.

 

Researchers argue that to truly take advantage of the sun's power, it is necessary to expand the amount of real estate which can be outfitted with solar, engineering ways to blend solar panels into our everyday lives.

 

Every day, sunlight streams through billions of windows—more than two million acres of “skyscraper” glass worldwide

Consider there are an estimated five million skyscrapers, tall towers, and commercial buildings in the U.S. alone; there is a huge amount of surface area on the vertical space of buildings available for energy generation. By applying transparent liquid, organic, photovoltaic coatings to the glass, window panes become electricity-generating. These coatings can be made of earth abundant carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, organic polymers and other materials which, in liquid form, are ideal for low-cost high-output manufacturing. They can be applied to glass and flexible plastic surfaces at ambient temperature and pressure, and produced in aesthetically appealing colored tints popular to architects, building owners, and developers for skyscraper glass. 

 

Unlike conventional solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, this type of technology can be applied to all sides of tall towers, generating electricity using natural and artificial light as well as shaded, diffused, and reflected light conditions. While conventional rooftop solar systems are limited to a handful of square feet due to congestion from heating, ventilation, and air conditioning, a modeled installation of these type of “solar” coatings could generate up to 50-times the energy and deliver 15-times the environmental benefits when compared to conventional roof-mounted PV. By some estimates, the payback period of this technology is as little as one year, while conventional solar systems have a payback of 5-11 years for the equivalent amount of power, and require an additional 10-12 acres of valuable urban land. 

 

Imagine a city with the ability to harvest its own energy needs

Transparent solar power coatings on windows, along with other recent innovations in the solar industry such as printing solar panels on smartphones and laptop cases, or embedding solar panels into roadways all recognize that non-intrusively adapting to how humans currently operate means that solar has the real potential to power the future. 

 

The 2015 Paris Climate Conference made it clear that the world has changed and the low carbon economy is not only inevitable, it is now irreversible. On December 7th, the solar industry announced the launch of the Global Solar Council (GSC) in an attempt to share best practices and bring the solar power industry together at an international level. 

 

The Chairman of the GSC, Bruce Douglas stated: “There is consensus that solar power will become the principal source of electricity generation. It has a hugely important role to play in the international efforts to ultimately eliminate carbon emissions from the power sector.” 

 

As the world works to implement the Paris climate agreement, market forces are finally working in the planet’s favor. In the wake of COP21, U.S. solar stocks rose by 5 percent and weeks later when an extension for U.S. tax credits was agreed upon, those same stocks popped by 30 percent.

 

For all of the skeptics who couldn’t imagine solar technology would come so far, creativity, hard work, and human determination continue to transform the solar industry and those same qualities will drive the transition to a low carbon future. 

 

John A. Conklin is the president and CEO of SolarWindow Technologies, Inc., located in Columbia, Maryland. He possesses more than 30 years of industrial, commercial, renewable and alternative energy experience, and has pioneered many innovative energy approaches. As CEO of SolarWindow Technologies, Inc., Conklin is overseeing the development of the world’s first of its kind see-through electricity generating technology for glass and flexible plastic that has the promise to turn tall towers and skyscrapers into electricity generating buildings.

 

SolarWindow Technologies, Inc. | www.solarwindow.com