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Solar windows could harvest energy from sun and indoor light (www.ucl.ac.uk)
submitted 2 days ago by to c/science@lemmy.world
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[–] 16 points 1 day ago* (6 children)

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.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 hours ago

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago

    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 I'm out of date, are we good at harvesting near-ir in photovoltaics?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).

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