New Energy Technologies has announced that new tests of its ultra-small solar cells for use in its transparent SolarWindow have demonstrated substantially superior performance over current thin-film and solar photovoltaic technologies at generating electricity from artificial light.
The company is now working to coat these cells onto transparent glass in order to fabricate its SolarWindows.
In a series of new experiments, researchers tested New Energy’s ultra-small solar cells on a 1”x1” substrate against today’s solar materials for their capacity to produce electricity under varying artificial light conditions, mimicking the levels of light exposure in homes and commercial offices.
The company claims that in every case, New Energy’s solar cells “exponentially outperformed all of the conventional materials tested”.
Under normal office lighting conditions, without the benefit of outside natural light from windows, New Energy’s ultra-small solar cells produced almost 2-fold greater output power density than monocrystalline silicon, more than 8-fold greater output power density than copper-indium-selenide, and more than 10-fold greater output power density than flexible thin-film amorphous-silicon.
The company’s ultra-small solar cells measure less than ¼ the size of a grain of rice and are fabricated using hydrogen-carbon based materials. These solar cells generate electricity not only from the visible light spectrum found in sunlight but also by using the visible light found in artificial light, such as fluorescent lighting typically installed in offices and commercial buildings.
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