At UCLA they’ve been busy working on new types of solar energy concepts. This time: a transparent solar cell that feeds off infrared rays instead of visible light. The manufacturing process for this chip is actually cheaper than the normal process for solar energy devices, but so far has only gotten a 4% efficiency despite its economic efficiency.
There’s a ways to go before the commercialization of the transparent chips becomes a reality, but since they are potentially transparent enough to somehow install inside of our own windows, there’s much hope that these little chips will be a great success in green energy.
UCLA professor Yang Yang who’s the head of the project said he, “[doesn’t] have the patience to wait much longer,” and estimates that “in five years [the scientists will] have something on a small scale, and then in 10 years it will be popular.”
