Most solar panels currently on the market have a blue or black tint covering.

This color comes from the type of element used to manufacture solar cells: polycrystalline (blue) or monocrystalline (black). A solar panel is made up of about 60 solar cells.

There is little difference between a polycrystaliline and a monocrystalline solar panel. The former are made up of multiple crystals; the latter from a single one. 

Monocrystalline solar panels are generally smooth or sharp and have higher efficiency, which translates into more solar energy being absorbed. Also, because of their higher absorption, you may need to install fewer of them on your home. 

Polycrystalline solar panels, on the other hand, may appear more scattered or fractured, and they have a definite blue coloring. These panels often come with a lower price and are often used in large solar farms.

Transparent photovoltaic cells

But the future of solar energy panels might more “transparent.”

Researchers at Michigan State University (MSU) are working on see-through solar materials that can be applied to home or car windows and could generate as much electricity as the ones installed on the roof of your house.

“Highly transparent solar cells represent the wave of the future for new solar applications,” explained Richard Lunt, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at MSU in a press release posted on the school’s website. “We analyzed their potential and show that by harvesting only invisible light, these devices can provide a similar electricity-generation potential as rooftop solar while providing additional functionality to enhance the efficiency of buildings, automobiles and mobile electronics.”

In fact, South Korean automakers Hyundai and Kia announced last year that they plan on fitting clear solar panels onto the roof or the hood of vehicles to generate additional electrical power for the car. It’s unclear how much power these transparent solar panels would generate.

Other car manufacturers, like German luxury brand Audi, are also thinkering with using clear solar panels on their automobiles’ roofs.

The researchers at MSU created a transparent luminescent color concentrator that “when placed on a window creates solar energy without disrupting the view.”

The thin, plastic-like material can be used on anything with a clear surface, including cell phones.

Lunt explains that his team used organic molecules to absorb invisible wavelenghts of sunlight. “The researchers can ‘tune’ these materials to pick up just the ultraviolet and the near-infrared wavelength that then convert this energy into electricity.”

And Michigan State University is not the only one developing this new solar technology. There are approximately nine transparent photovoltaic (TPV) technologies under development (at MIT, UCLA and other institutions), and studies regarding these technologies aim to achieve high transparency along with electrical performance that is compatible with solar panels that are sold in the market, according to the study “a review of transparent solar photovoltaic technologies” published in Sciencedirect.

A “game changer”

See-through solar panels would increase electricity production in large glass towers or could be easier to integrate into old buildings. 

You would no longer be limited to installation of solar panels on roofs.

Thin film photovoltaics (TPV), the researchers point out, would also be cheaper to produce.

“TPV is basically a thin film that has a thickness ranging from a few nanometres to tens of micrometres of active material deposited on glass in different ways. Thin film technology reduces the cost of solar cells by conserving the materials used in fabricating the cell; it is easy to deposit thin films on many different substrates, from rigid to flexible and from insulators to metals,” they note.

They propose this will give a boost to the current use of solar power. Despite tremendous growth in recent years, only about 1.5 percent of electricity in the United States and globally is produced by solar energy.

But there’s an estimated 5-7 billion square meters of glass surface in the United States. Transparent solar cells attached to this surface area would supply about “40 percent of energy demand in the U.S. - about the same potential as rooftop solar units.”

Still, clear solar panel technology is far from perfect.

In the press release from MSU, Lunt admits that the efficiency of their transparent solar cells is somewhere about 5 percent; traditional solar panels can reach an efficiency of up to 20-25 percent, and the most advance even above 40 percent. 

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