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Windows that produce electricity, what a crazy idea, right? Well, this has actually become a reality. Imagine this: you wake up in your home, in a bright apartment with a view of the city. While you prepare your breakfast, the sun comes in through the windows… and at the same time, those windows are generating electricity in a silent, invisible, and clean way. It might sound like a movie scene, but it is something that is already starting to happen in real life, thanks to a very innovative technology called transparent solar windows.
Thanks to researchers at Michigan State University we can enjoy this technology we never thought possible. It’s true it is not very common yet, because
traditional solar panels
are more popular now. However, it is already being used in some places and it’s still being developed to make the best version.
What are transparent solar windows and how do they work?
Of course, these windows can’t be compared to the traditional solar panels we see on rooftops. They work differently because they are made with a special type of glass that can generate electricity, while still being transparent.
This glass lets visible light through — the light we use to light up our homes — but absorbs other types of light that we can’t see, like ultraviolet and infrared light, which have a lot of energy. That energy is turned into electricity thanks to small invisible solar cells that are inside the glass itself.
The most interesting part is that from the outside nothing looks strange: the windows look and feel like any normal window. But in reality, they are helping to produce clean energy for the building. This technology was developed in 2014 by Richard Lunt and his team, and it has continued to improve since then.
What can be done with this technology?
This innovation has great potential, especially in cities. For example, in the United States, there are between 5 and 7 billion square meters of glass in buildings. If all that glass were replaced with solar windows, a huge amount of clean electricity could be produced. That means schools, shopping centers, offices, and skyscrapers could generate part or even all of their energy.
The company Ubiquitous Energy, which was co-founded by Richard Lunt himself, is already working to manufacture these windows on a large scale and bring them to commercial buildings. Its goal is for any glass surface to be able to become a small solar plant.
In Europe, they are also moving forward with this technology. For example, a company in the Netherlands called
Physee
is installing 15,000 smart windows in office buildings. These windows not only generate electricity but also help control the indoor temperature. And in Denmark, an international school in Copenhagen already has more than 12,000 transparent solar panels that cover a large part of its energy use. It is also expected that in Asia this technology will begin to be used more and more in the coming years.
Why could these windows be the future?
The best thing about these windows is that they don’t need extra space to work. They can be installed in buildings that already exist, without the need to find land or do major construction work. This is ideal for big cities like New York, São Paulo, or Tokyo, where there is not much free space to install traditional solar panels.
In addition, they allow each building to produce its own electricity, without depending so much on far-away or polluting power plants. In this way, local, clean, and silent energy is generated, without changing the urban landscape.
Basically, transparent solar windows are not just an idea of the future: they are already starting to become part of the present. And if this technology keeps growing, we could live in cities where every window helps take care of the planet. Can you imagine your house, your school, or your office generating its own energy just by letting sunlight through the windows? With these windows, that is no longer just an idea: it’s a real possibility.
