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harness solar energy: photovoltaics (also called solar electric), solar heating & cooling, concentrating solar power (typically built at utility-scale), and passive solar.

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The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, (NREL), has demonstrated a prototype of a solar powered smart window.
The prototypes tested reached up to 11.3% efficiency. The solar cell is based on the lab/headline favorite material perovskite.

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the cost of installing traditional solar panels is falling rapidly, and advances in manufacturing mean that they are more efficient than ever.

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Solar windows are barely beginning to touch the market, and remain highly inefficient and expensive.

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In theory, quantum dots embedded in glass windows would be able to absorb light and re-emit it as infrared light towards solar cells housed at the edges of window panels, which would be used to generate power.

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Traditional opaque solar panels use photovoltaic technology, meaning they capture energy in the form of light and use it to generate electricity. Because windows are meant to let light through, windows that act as solar panels need to reconcile letting incoming light through to illuminate a room and also capturing incoming light to use for energy production.

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Solar windows would hypothetically be able to replace standard glass window panes, while traditional solar panels are an addition to a previously installed roof. As a result, this type of solar technology is often referred to as “building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV).”

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Solar energy is the technology used to harness the sun's energy and make it useable.

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solar energy use has surged at about 20 percent a year over the past 15 years, thanks to rapidly falling prices and gains in efficiency. Japan, Germany, and the United States are major markets for solar cells. With tax incentives, and efficient coordination with energy companies, solar electricity can often pay for itself in five to ten years.

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Solar power is energy from the sun that is converted into thermal or electrical energy.

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Solar is the Latin word for sun—a powerful source of energy that can be used to heat, cool, and light our homes and businesses.

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The smart window lowers building temperatures by shifting from clear to opaque under strong sunlight. When the shift to opaque occurs, the solar prototype begins electricity production.

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If windows can be designed with quantum dot technology, enough energy may be able to be harnessed from the sun while still letting light through the glass window pane the quantum dots are housed in.

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Physee’s product uses small solar panels installed along the edges of glass panes to generate electricity from the sun.

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The system uses materials to pick up ultraviolet and near infrared wavelengths, which are guided to the edge of the surface they are on for it to be converted into electricity by thin strips of photovoltaic solar cells. Ultra-thin, transparent solar panels could potentially be retrofitted onto skyscrapers and smartphones, meaning windows and screens would not need to be replaced in order to generate electricity from buildings or electronic devices.

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The most common isolated-gain passive solar home design is a sunspace that can be closed off from the house with doors, windows, and other operable openings. Also known as a sunroom, solar room, or solarium, a sunspace can be included in a new home design or added to an existing home.

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An indirect-gain passive solar home has its thermal storage between the south-facing windows and the living spaces.

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In a direct gain design, sunlight enters the house through south-facing windows and strikes masonry floors and/or walls, which absorb and store the solar heat. As the room cools during the night, the thermal mass releases heat into the house.

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In simple terms, a passive solar home collects heat as the sun shines through south-facing windows and retains it in materials that store heat, known as thermal mass.

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Passive solar design takes advantage of a building’s site, climate, and materials to minimize energy use

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photovoltaic cells, or solar panels, found on things like spacecraft, rooftops, and handheld calculators. The cells are made of semiconductor materials like those found in computer chips. When sunlight hits the cells, it knocks electrons loose from their atoms. As the electrons flow through the cell, they generate electricity

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Passive solar buildings are designed and oriented to collect, store, and distribute the heat energy from sunlight to maintain the comfort of the occupants without the use of moving parts or electronics

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active solar systems, which use mechanical or electrical devices that convert the sun's heat or light to another form of usable energy

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The most commonly used solar technologies for homes and businesses are solar water heating, passive solar design for space heating and cooling, and solar photovoltaics for electricity.

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Rooftop solar panels typically have an efficiency of between 15 and 18 percent, whereas the see-through solar cells record efficiencies of around 5 percent. However, Lunt (Richard Lunt, an associate professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at MSU) says he expects to see a three-fold improvement in efficiency of the transparent solar cells.

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A solar window that doesn’t let enough light simply acts as a vertically mounted solar panel; if it lets too much light in, the window can’t generate enough electricity to be cost-effective. For solar panel windows to impact the solar market, they need to become truly building-integrated and unobtrusive.

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“Ultimately, this technology offers a promising route to inexpensive, widespread solar adoption on small and large surfaces that were previously inaccessible.”

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Scientists at Michigan State University detailed in a paper in the journal Nature Energy how highly transparent solar applications could “nearly meet U.S. electricity demand” and drastically reduce reliance upon fossil fuels.

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Solar energy doesn't work at night without a storage device such as a battery, and cloudy weather can make the technology unreliable during the day. Solar technologies are also very expensive and require a lot of land area to collect the sun's energy at rates useful to lots of people.

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An estimated 5 billion to 7 billion square meters of glass surface in the United States could be used to meet 40 percent of the country’s energy demand, or “close to 100 percent” if energy storage is improved.

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including generating electricity, providing light or a comfortable interior environment, and heating water for domestic, commercial, or industrial use.

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As of 2011, the technology produced less than one tenth of one percent of global energy demand.