US company Ubiquitous Energy has invented a thin coating that turns windows into transparent solar panels, providing other ways to harvest renewable energy in buildings beyond rooftop panels.
Ubiquitous Energy describes its technology as being the only transparent photovoltaic glass coating that is "visibly indistinguishable" from traditional windows.
Any surface could become a solar panel
The company was founded in 2011 by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Michigan State University (MSU), who engineered a transparent solar panel by allowing the visible spectrum of light to pass through and only absorbing ultraviolet and near-infrared light to convert to electricity.
Standard solar panels look black because they absorb the full spectrum of light, and because of their appearance, their deployment has been typically limited to roofs, walls and large rural solar farms. With Ubiquitous Energy's coating, which it calls UE Power, potentially any surface can be turned into a photovoltaic panel.
Ubiquitous Energy's transparent solar windows (above) are installed at Michigan State University (top)
"The mission is to turn all these everyday surfaces around us into essentially renewable energy generators," Ubiquitous Energy VP of Strategy Veeral Hardev told Dezeen.
"Windows is where we're focused first, but beyond that, think about vehicles, transportation in general, portable consumer electronics devices, sustainable farmin...