A new development is gaining momentum: transparent solar panels

New solar panels, which can also be placed on different glass surfaces, can create a real revolution in the field of renewable energy production

By Racheli Vox, Angle, Science and Environment News Agency

When we think of solar panels, big and heavy blue-black bricks that are placed on the roof or fill large areas of land come to mind. However, in recent years a new development has been gaining momentum: partially or completely transparent solar panels that can be placed on windows without blocking light or obscuring the view. New American review article He presented the latest developments in the field and showed that widespread use of such panels will allow us to generate much more electricity from solar energy, instead of the polluting fossil fuels: coal, oil and natural gas.

Research, published by Michigan State University researchers in the journal Nature Energy, focuses on the development of a completely transparent solar panel. This panel uses organic molecules that the researchers developed in order to absorb only the parts of sunlight that are invisible to the human eye: the ultraviolet and near-infrared radiation, and convert this energy into electricity.

According to the researchers, the transparent panels will produce the same amount of electricity that could be produced from similar products. In addition to that, the new panels can be installed on any transparent surface: house windows, vehicle windows and even on cellular devices, without affecting the functionality or aesthetics of the surface. In this way, a high skyscraper, for example, will be able to generate for itself the energy needed to operate it (and even generate additional electricity and transfer it to other places), even without having a special dedicated surface for large solar panels on the roof of the building.

cover large areas

In fact, a combination of the two types of panels, transparent and traditional, can produce a very large amount of electricity - such that it will almost satisfy the needs of an entire country. The authors estimate that in the United States there are about 7-5 billion square meters of glass surfaces and that deploying transparent solar panels over such a large area can provide over 40 percent of the country's energy needs. In other words, the realization of the potential of these two methods of energy harvesting, together with the improvement of energy storage, will lead to the possibility of meeting almost all the energy needs of the United States from solar energy alone. others.

The efficiency of the transparent solar panels (that is, the percentage of the sun's energy that they are able to turn into electricity) is currently five percent, while the efficiency of the panels on the roofs is about 18-15 percent. It is likely that the transparent panels will never be as effective as their opaque brothers, but as mentioned, their transparency allows them to cover larger areas and thus compensate for this fact. Also, it is important to note that unlike the solar panels on the roofs, which have been researched and developed for decades, the transparent panels came into the picture only a few years ago.

Panels that can be placed on windows are not the only solution to incorporate solar energy harvesting into the building itself. "Today there is an entire field called BIPV (Building integrated photovoltaics), which includes solar cells that are actually part of the shell - they are not just an addition to the building but part of the building itself," says Dr. Daniel Mader, researcher and scientific consultant, one of the founders of the environmental consulting company SP Interface. "These can be tiles for the roof - which are not an additional device for the roof but are used as the roof itself, windows, tiles on the walls and more." Today, Madar adds, building a building using this method can Even being cheaper than building a "normal" building.

Israel was left behind

The technological developments in the field of solar energy certainly inspire optimism, but in the meantime the situation on the ground is not particularly rosy. Today, only 1.5 percent of the demand for electricity in the US and in the world is provided by solar energy. And what is Israel's situation in relation to the rest of the world? "Depends on who you compare," Madar says, "Compared to countries like Mozambique, we are making progress. Compared to the West and the OECD, we are very behind." Madar says that in the past Israel was a powerhouse of solar energy: the modern solar water heater is an Israeli invention, and in the XNUMXs legislation was passed that supported its widespread installation, but while the rest of the world progressed and developed - Israel was left behind. "There are plans to increase the extent of the use of solar energy, but they do not really meet the standards of reducing greenhouse gases and transforming our electricity, which relies on fossil fuels, to be based on renewable energies," says Madar.

In the government decision approved for the Paris Commission in 2015, national goals were defined in the field of renewable energies, and it was decided that by the end of 2030 at least 17 Percent from scope Production Electricity In Israel will be from renewable energies. According to דו"ח New של Company For protection Nature, it is even possible to bypass this goal and produce about 2030 percent of the electricity of the State of Israel by 30, even if we are satisfied with placing solar panels on the roofs only. The report was presented in the Knesset and also includes an action plan for its implementation.

Meanwhile, such volumes of use of solar energy are still a distant dream. "Today, one of the main considerations preventing the transition to solar energy is that it is said to be expensive and uneconomical," says Madar. "To a certain extent this was true in the past, like any relatively new technology, but today we see that its costs are equal and even lower than those of coal and gas." Today, the countries of the world are massively subsidizing fossil fuels - a subsidy that is seven times greater than that of renewable energies. "It is enough to look at what Israel is doing to develop its gas reserves," says Madar, "if this money were put on renewable energies, we would be in a completely different place."

The story does not end with the direct subsidy. "We are also indirectly subsidizing all the damage that fossil fuels create: climate change, air pollution and illness of people and damage to infrastructure and agriculture," says Madar. "We pay anyway - we're just not aware of it." The costs of these damages worldwide reach 3 trillion dollars. "Already today, with these indirect costs, fossil fuels are much more expensive for us," says Madar. "The state should invest in solar energy."

See more on the subject on the science website:

• Scientists are designing a solar cell that captures almost all of the energy of the solar spectrum
• Tesla presents: solar tiles and a battery that provide the electricity consumption of an apartment
• Solar on the water
• An efficient method for producing solar cells