Photovoltaic energy for self-consumption is an opportunity with which you can have electricity almost for free (you’ve already seen Tesla’s inventions, for example). However, a group of scientists has just come up with a science-fiction invention that you will want at home: this is the invisible solar panel that replaces your windows and with which you will turn your home into a generator. If you think we’re exaggerating, wait until you discover the features of this innovative proposal.
This Solar Panel is Invisible: Experts Cannot Believe How It Produces Energy
InQs is a premier Japanese-based company in the line of renewable energy and has created a clear, flexible solar panel. This innovation can be said to be one of the most powerful technologies because it takes solar energy and makes it a part of our lives by stretching it into windows.
InQs’ coated sunglasses have a unique, pliable solar panel circuit that can harvest electricity from low and obscure light, even infrared and ultraviolet light. Compared to conventional solar PV panels, these panels absorb only infrared light, thus permitting visible light to pass through, and therefore can easily be incorporated into windows.
It incorporates glass that could incorporate indoor and residual light, an idea that could dwarf a section of the vast rooftop solar power plants. A solar panel that was designed in a stained-glass window-style social media experiment was exhibited at CES 2024; this was when InQs took the first step and started developing their transparent solar panel technology.
This not only highlights that it is possible to incorporate solar cells into buildings, like the existing slit-like creation of these windows and screens, Smartphone touchscreens and so on. This technology was awarded the ‘CES 2024 Innovation Award’, which is considered to be awarded to peculiar inventions.
How Was InQs’ Solar Panel Developed? It Was Not Easy to Achieve the Impossible
The Solar (“S”) panels developed by InQs are almost fully transparent, with a visible light transmittance rate of up to 75%, like multi-layered glasses. This implies that the panels can power appliances while still having the ability to permit light to pass through them, hence being applicable to windows.
The heat shielding occurs so that no absorption occurs at the opposite side of the light source, which further gives stable and efficient power from any sources of light. The uses that InQs has proposed for its transparent solar panels are obvious, as is evident in the following:
- Kinetic energy can be harnessed to drive apps like keyboards, mice, or smart sensors for home automation or even to produce electricity for homes or buildings.
- It also allows for implementing battery longevity or additional power sources into consumer electronics like smartphones and tablets.
How Can You Use This Invisible Solar Panel? That’s How You Generate (Almost) Free Electricity at Home
Moreover, the idea of using the technology is that of applying transparent solar panels in automotive industry, for instance, in cars’ windows or sunroof in order to help supply the electric power demand of electrical or mixed cars. Here is the extent of the power produced by InQs’ clear solar panels – it is rather impressive.
The efficiency of the technology can reach a level of 18 percent with different o-efficiency factors. Being only 1% while maintaining energy conversion efficiency that competes directly with traditional crystalline silicon solar panels. This efficiency rate is expected to increase as technology advances; thus, the game involves a lot of thinking.
Just when we thought that silicon (monocrystalline) was going to be the material of the future for photovoltaic energy, along came perovskite. This has been the key that has allowed the development of an invisible solar panel that, perhaps in the medium term, you will be able to have at home. Did you not have space to place them until now? No problem; these go on your windows and generate electricity with daylight, at no cost to you, and with the option of being stored in batteries if you have them installed.
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