July 14th, 2008 · No Comments

By Harriet Blake

An engineering team at MIT has developed a new solar concentrator that doubles as a window and generates more electricity with fewer solar cells than typical solar panels — moving toward the day when on-site solar power might make fiscal sense for homeowners.

“The device,” says team member Jon Mapel, “is the solar concentrator which collects and focuses light to the edges of glass plates, and could function as windows or [become] integrated into existing solar panels to increase power output.”

In a recent presentation, project leader and electrical engineer Marc Baldo, explained how the new solar collector/panel works:

“We’re built a solar concentrator that is a flat piece of glass with dye on top of it. Light comes in, hits the dye, is absorbed by the dye and then the dye re-emits the light at a longer wavelength. The light is trapped and guided to the edge of the glass and collected around the edges [by solar cells].” The cells then convert the light energy into electricity.

“We are collecting light over a large area,” says Baldo, “but only need a small amount of solar cells to generate electricity. We think the combination of the solar concentrator and the solar cell will give us twice as much power and use half as much as area on the roof.”

The windows not only use sunlight to efficiently power the building they are part of, they allow light to enter a room — unlike current rooftop solar panels, note the engineers.

The invention is particularly good news when it comes to price, according to the MIT team.

“We think these will be fairly inexpensive to make because the dye is common car paint, which is extremely inexpensive and tolerant of defects,” says Baldo. “The system won’t short-circuit or crash the whole panel if there are a few defects,” he says.

In addition to windows, the MIT team says that the solar concentrators could also be used in conjunction with existing solar panels on roofs and walls to improve their efficiency.

So when can homeowners start shopping?

“We believe we can get the product to market within three years,” Mapel says

And that should be one hungry market, given the rising costs of most traditional energy sources, combined with the fact that only about one percent of the country’s current energy consumption is solar powered.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media