WINDOWS MADE OF SOLAR PANELS

 

New materials are also helping make solar panels cheaper and more profitable.

Solar power is the most common renewable energy source in cities because the cost has fallen from $4 per watt a decade ago to $0.50 now.

But the manufacture of silicon-based solar panels involves a large energy expenditure because it requires temperatures above 1,400ºC or higher and the silicon must be 99.9999% pure.

Now materials like perovskite have emerged that can make panels much thinner, cheaper and work at much lower temperatures, says Nitin Padture, an engineering professor at Brown University in the United States.

Being partially transparent, they could also be used for windows.

The drawback is that most of them contain lead, a highly toxic metal, but one option suggested by Professor Padture and his team is to replace lead with titanium.

"Titanium is pretty common, but no one had thought of using it to replace lead in perovskite solar panels," he says.

"We are not looking to replace the silicon technology that exists right now, but to improve it."

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