Documents
A Brite New World
of solar technology that can be used as power producing glass
for greenhouses, home and office buildings
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Related material: the project, press coverage and the collaborators behind the technology.
How the glass is built
The panel is a laminate: an active layer carried between sheets of architectural glass, sealed at the edges and mounted in the same profiles a greenhouse or facade already uses. Nothing about the installation asks the builder to learn a new trade, which matters more for adoption than any laboratory figure.
Transparency is the design parameter that everything else follows from. A pane that passes most of the visible light leaves the crop unaffected but generates modestly; one that passes less produces more current and starts to shade. The specification is chosen per project, against the crop and the latitude it will grow at.
Why generate power on site
Greenhouses draw electricity during daylight hours: ventilation, irrigation pumps, climate control and screens all run while the sun is up. That overlap means most of what the roof generates is consumed on the spot rather than exported.
Self-consumed electricity is worth the retail price rather than the export tariff, and it sidesteps both transmission losses and the grid connection queues that delay ground-mounted projects in agricultural regions.