Jan
25
With the recent announcement of a large scale installation of Pythagoras-Solar’s photo voltaic glass unit (PVGU) at an organic food wholesaler in the USA the market for Solar windows has made a significant advance. The potential for power generation from commercial installation of solar glazing on all the commercial buildings in the world is enormous. The cost in terms of energy to create all the windows is not such a great deal. However if it creates a net increase in power generation with a net decrease in grid consumption it is a better use of energy than the existing solutions for commercial glazing.
With each commercial scale building already requiring the cooling from darkened glazing and the total area available on a building for absorbing sunlight the energy created by installing the solar glazing solution is significant enough to offset a substantial amount of power consumption in a normal day. With a claim of 140watts per square meter they are claiming to be able to beat the best possible rate of efficiency from a top of the line commercial solar PV panel. Even with setting a generous solar constant of 500watts per square meter at the earths surface, 140 watts represents 28% efficiency. Given that the most efficient PV panel in the market is only barely making it to 24% efficiency the claims of 140 watts per square meter appear to be either a world first or a significant overstatement of the efficiency of the glazing solution.
Still even if they are capable of just half that amount by collecting 70watts per square meter they are still enabling a building the size of the Berg Kalipha with a total surface area of 500,000 square meters to potentially generate 35 million watts if the entire surface was covered in this kind of solar glazing.
Given that the energy consumption of the Berg Kalipha is 50million watts that represents a significant energy and cost saving potential for very large buildings.
