A Brite New World
of solar technology that can be used as power producing glass for greenhouses, home and office buildings
The Technology
PanePowerSW is a uniquely transparent — up to 80 % — solar panel glass that generates clean energy through PV technology. It lowers energy costs and, more importantly, allows the light to shine through the windows of greenhouses and commercial buildings.
Conventional photovoltaic panels are opaque: whatever they cover stays in shadow. That rules them out for a greenhouse, where every hour of light feeds the crop. Transparent glass removes the trade-off, so the same square metre both grows plants and produces electricity.
Energy Innovations in Glass — Towards a Sustainable Future
Greenhouse farming is a solution to worldwide food demand: it can increase food production by up to 1000 % per hectare compared with open field agriculture. That intensity comes at a price — heating, lighting and climate control make a greenhouse one of the most energy-hungry forms of farming there is.
With PanePowerSW we aim to improve greenhouse energy consumption while increasing crop production, so that the roof which shelters the crop also pays part of its energy bill.
- power generated where it is consumed, without extra land
- daylight preserved for the crop underneath
- installation on new builds and on existing glazing
The Team
The project is run by engineers and researchers from the semiconductor and solar industries, combining device physics, materials research and volume manufacturing.
Management
Leadership comes from semiconductor manufacturing: decades spent building development and mass-production teams, bringing memory and analog technologies from laboratory to volume, and running organisations across the United States, Europe and Asia.
Engineering and research
Research is led from an academic nanotechnology and solar applications laboratory, with work published on the conversion of solar into electrical energy through dye-sensitized and polymer solar cells, luminescence of organic-inorganic composite materials and photocatalysis over semiconductor nanoparticles.
More about the work is on the project page; published material and coverage are collected under documents and press.
