Glass maker Pilkington keeps eye on new solar technologies

Sara Ver-Bruggen - 02 Jun 2010

International glass producer Pilkington is partnering with UK R&D on two separate projects to follow the progress of new solar materials that can be coated onto glass.

In one project, which has received funding from the UK government, Cambridge-based Polysolar is working with Pilkington to develop a demonstrator made of a large pane of glass with spray-coated organic photovoltaics (OPVs), achieving good levels of transparency. The two-year project continues PolySolar's original investment in technology that originated from Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory and technology from Plextronics in the US.

According to Hamish Watson, who founded Polysolar, the company aims to produce glass with an efficiency of 4%. A building envelope comprising of the glass could then generate between 20-30% of its energy needs, while the additional cost of the PV functionality would not add too much to the cost of the construction glass, which can cost up to €1,200 per m².

Building projects

It may be three years before the OPV glass is commercialised. In the meantime, Polysolar provides a solar glass based on amorphous silicon with a good degree of transparency, which is already being used in bus shelters and some prestigious new building projects.

Pilkington is also the industrial partner on a project bid that spans several UK academic institutes, including Swansea University and The University of Manchester, all looking to pool their IP and knowledge in dye-sensitised and other emerging solar cell technology for the building-integrated PV market. Pilkington's interest is in new opportunities for construction glass, where it can be treated with the capacity to harvest energy from light and solar.

Dye-sensitised solar cells and other emerging printable PVs are more effective at turning more light on the spectrum to energy, whereas silicon is most effective in bright sun, making these technologies suitable for deployment in cloudy climates, like much of northern Europe.

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