All the people here “hur dur such a stupid idea” nah you’re the stupid ones. Try living in a country where it’s so hot and sunny most of the year that we fucking cover our windows with reflective materials to reduce the light intensity. Reduce heat/defuse light/generate power as opposed to shitty reflective material that does nothing else or dropping shutters and wasting electricity on light. It makes perfect sense for us. People really fucking piss me off…
That’s like the most logical approach. I don’t care if it only charges a phone or keeps a few led lights on… Please keep the heat out.
Why not just put the solar panel next to the window so you don’t have to cover it at all? The more light a panel absorbes, the more efficient it is, which is kind of the exact opposite type of thing that you would want to cover a window with if you still want it to be a window. I’m not even going to bother addressing the inefficiencies of harvesting indoor light, other than to say it’s idiotic.
I mean, couldn’t you take a solar panel and make it like an awning above the window or something? Have a system where it can pull into the window to be flush with the building if you want.
You want to use solar panels to both collect solar energy AND provide shade to residents within the building? Sounds a bit too efficient for my tastes. Let’s put ugly brown tints on the windows instead and collect a fraction of the energy at 10x the cost.
That’s not a bad idea. Solar shutters could work also.
This seems more like an alternative to tinting films. So you can harvest the energy that would otherwise be lost.
The indoor light sounds pretty silly, I agree.
Do you think there is an appreciable amount of IR, near IR, UV light that it could be worth it? I’m out of date, are we good at harvesting near-ir in photovoltaics? I remember hearing or reading about some frequency upconversion material solutions but it’s been a while.
Another problem that comes to mind is the fact that you often want to reflect non-useful-to-vision light rather than absorb it (and heat up).
Is it required to absorb all light or just some spectrum or whatever that called?
Can we please stop pouring money into stupid ideas? Solar windows make as much sense as a water-soluble condom. It’s the kind of hair-brained shit I’d expect to see Elon touting. An invention that is the antithesis of its purpose, dreamed up and funded by some methed out moron surrounded by yes-men and brown-nosers who is so out of touch with the world that he doesn’t understand the innate purpose of the object, nor the application of the technology
I think it all boils down to “hey boss, I patented this new technology!”, “great, let’s shove it down people’s throats, pour a bunch of money into getting this hyped in popsci magazines and online tech spaces, we’re gonna make hundreds of millions of dollars before anyone realizes what a dumb fucking idea this is.”
This is the nature of popsci journalism for sure. Combined with the startup funding (/grift, often) hype cycle… Ugly
One time I had a PR person from my school suit down in my office with me. He really wanted to hype oeut research. I was a wet blanket - probably overly so as I’m actually people-pleaser plus under-promise over-deliver which was incompatible.
I ended up kinda struggling and seeing how disappointment, almost annoyance, all I could say was ‘go talk to [my professor], he’s much better at this’
I feel ya. “This is above my paygrade. I’m getting to old for this shiiiet.” Kick it up to the boss.
This is awesome. I want em.
Forget solar roads, Solar WINDOWS!
solar roadways would do that, but better!
Driving on solar panels seems bad for them.
but it’s so cyberpunk and cool.
want to see the youtube video where the guy claims it’s gonna produce billions of gigabytes of electricity for free?
Lol, gigabytes. I think autocorrect might have bit you.
i’m just being cheeky lmao
“for free” excluding the insane installation fee (including the economic hit from having to close all those roads while they are being installed) and the insane maintenance costs of keeping the ground under cars clean enough for the panels to be efficient?
It makes far more sense to replace all of the farmland that we are currently growing corn for ethanol on, with solar panels. Not only would the farmers be making free money, we would also generate more electricity than America currently uses.
