Invisible Solar Cell Almost Ready for Mass Production

Solar company New Energy Technologies Inc. (NET) is already known for researching and developing see through solar cells, but it is now nearly ready to start mass producing invisible solar cells, which could be placed on windows without affecting the transparency of the glass.

NET’s SolarWindow prototype has super-thin solar cells layered onto glass, arranged in a network, and then connected together using almost invisible wires.

Working with the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, NET has discovered how to reduce the material cost and raise the conversion efficiency, readying the SolarWindow for profitable mass production.

The new manufacturing process removes the need for high temperature vacuum deposition; a slow and expensive technique where super-thin layers are set out molecule by molecule in a high temperature vacuum.

John Conklin, president and CEO of New Energy Technologies, truly believes in the potential of his product.

“Over the past few months, our researchers have unveiled a virtually invisible conductive wiring system, which collects and transports electricity on SolarWindow™ prototypes, and have fabricated a large area working module, which is more than 14-times larger than previous organic photovoltaic devices fabricated at NREL. Earlier, we developed our first-ever working SolarWindow™ prototype using a faster, rapid scale-up process for applying solution-based coatings.

Together, these achievements have moved us closer to our manufacturing, scale-up, durability, and power production goals — all important factors to advancing our SolarWindow™ technology towards commercial launch.”

By. James Burgess of Oilprice.com