US startup Ubiquitous Energy has received $70 million for developing green windows that can provide buildings with green energy, CNBC reports.
Ubiquitous Energy wants to do its part to save the planet from global warming through innovative green energy mining methods.
So, to power skyscrapers, the company plans to cover the windows of urban buildings with an additional layer that can process solar energy into electricity. The thickness of such a layer is only a few nanometers, and small wires connect the entire system to electrical appliances.
According to the company’s CEO Susan Stone, the funds will be invested to launch the product on the market.
“In the future we will be able to make French windows (windows to the floor). We will turn skyscrapers into vertical solar farms,” Stone said.
In addition to office buildings, Ubiquitous Energy also focuses on residential buildings. By early 2024, the organization plans to launch large-scale production.
New glasses have a significant minus, their price. Coated windows will cost 30 percent more than regular windows.
However, the manufacturer and investors rely on the urgent need to solve the problem of global warming, hoping that this factor will increase demand for the product. As solar panels, Ubiquitous Energy windows perform worse than traditional competitors – they are 50 percent less efficient.
This is mostly due to their position in space: less sunlight falls on a vertical surface than on a horizontal one.
“But we made a useful surface that did not generate energy at all. Glass has always been passive, and we made it active,” Stone said.
China has also made a bet on solar energy in the fight against climate change. The country’s government is actively financing the construction of new factories to produce polysilicon, a material used to make photovoltaic cells for solar panels.
Thus, the plan is to reduce the cost of producing batteries and increase the pace of implementing projects in renewable energy sources.