Colourful ‘solar glass’ means entire buildings can generate clean power. British firm develops colourful, transparent solar cells that will add just 10% to glass buildings’ cost. This was 11 years ago. Where are these solar buildings?
by Few_Simple9049
24 Comments
I’m going to guess that these haven’t been approved to use, probably don’t have a mass production facility, and likely don’t have a similar life span compared to existing construction materials. So the buildings that have these are likely on University campuses where they are part of materials science research.
> will add ~~just~~ 10% to glass buildings’ cost.
Answered your own question.
Perhaps it was a bollocks new technology that made a bunch of promises hoping to take off but ultimately doesn’t deliver on any of those promises and so it fails
Good luck convincing any business to increase costs by 0.000010%, let alone a whole 10%.
10% increase in building costs is insanely high. Pretty sure these panels don’t produce anywhere near the order of magnitude of the electricity needed to make it viable without massive government subsidies.
This is what Adam Driver used in Megaoplolis to….you know I don’t really have a joke here…there was that screenshot of him looking through a spyglass while holding some orange filter like he just picked them off the prop table for the first time and this reminded me of that.
IIRC they are pretty inefficient and don’t last very long. There are newer versions of these photovoltaic glass from other manufacturers, but idk what’s the progress on those
this is similar to solar roadways – we have so much unused roof area. fit them all with panels first and then think of using other suboptimal surfaces..
Lost in the solar system of missed opportunities
Still waiting for those sun-soaked skyscrapers to shine.
Probably the economies of scale.
The investment a company would have to make in maintaining a stock large enough to be viable for on-demand supply was probably not factored into the initial estimate. On top of that would be the added expense of maintaining stocks of different color types, sizes, thickness and hardness. Unless you get a financier with deep pocket who can bankroll a project at the scale of a large building project it will be just a fancy concept in a trade magazine.
Not the same thing, but I came to think of [this hotel ](https://ideon.se/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Elite-Hotel-Ideon_400x67px.jpg)in my hometown, where the paint changes colour depending on the angle you view it from. So when driving past it you’ll have it change from red to yellow to green etc.
There’s a company who went all out developing a facility to mass produce these, called MetaMaterials. Ticker MMAT. Seemed really promising back in 2020 after a large boom in stock price and interest but went on a steep decline after the post covid market rally ended. They just filed for bankruptcy a couple months ago.
Self healing concrete with bacteria. When the concrete cracks rain water will release the bacteria and fill in the gaps. It’s 10% more and hasn’t really caught on either.
These are used for exhibitionist buildings to show how ‘green’ a building could be.
For compliance with rating systems such as LEED. Apart from that, I haven’t heard or read of widespread usage.
The way it’s worded, it sounds like it adds 10% of the entire cost of the building. If that’s the case, that’s all the information you need. If it’s only 10% to the cost of the glass, that’s more reasonable, but I don’t think that’s what it is.
One issue with window solar panels is that they can only accumulate energy from light that doesn’t pass through the window, meaning that you get only 50% of the available solar energy for that area plus a 50% reduction in the light that comes through. Much easier to just have panels on the roof where the angle is better and they can absorb nearly 100% of the available energy
They look pretty and have nice color
Waiting for approval?!!
I wonder how long it took to approve flammable cladding for high rise buildings compared to this great idea?
Scam.
It adds 10% to the cost, while being way less efficient than conventional solar panels, which probably add less than 5% cost and has everyone in the building exposed to artificial colors as if they would work in a beer bottle and use artificial lightsources to compensate for the lack of natural light.
I’m sure they have been overtaken by a similar technology that delivers more power. The technologies iterate so quickly that you can’t get productions up and running before they are obsolete.
The bulk of current production is dedicated to designs nearing a decade old. Relying on improvements in materials rather than retooling for the next wave.
Nearly all large-scale production lines run in this fashion. Save consumer electronics, which explains one of the reason phones cost 1k+
They made up their numbers. It’s cheaper to just put a panel on the roof
Probably like most things like this
They got their funding, it turned out to be more of an idea that anything, they learn how expensive and impractical it is, they abandon it as millionairs