Aug 27 2010
New Energy Technologies, Inc. (OTCBB:NENE) announced today that researchers developing the Company’s first-of-its-kind SolarWindow™, capable of generating electricity on see-thru glass, are targeting new methods of applying its electricity-generating coatings in order to cut future production costs.
Researchers are also working to bolster the electrical power output of SolarWindow™, generated from both natural sunlight and artificial sources such as fluorescent lighting typically installed inside commercial offices and incandescent bulbs inside residential homes.
“With more than 80 million detached homes and 5 million commercial buildings in America, we’ve worked hard to surpass several important technical milestones in the development of our SolarWindow™ technology for eventual commercial deployment to these markets,” explained Mr. John A. Conklin, President and CEO of New Energy Technologies, Inc. “Our researchers are now focusing on increasing power output, lowering future production costs, and scaling up our working prototype which we expect to unveil in the weeks ahead.”
New Energy’s working prototype serves as a model for future advancements to various surface coating techniques and methodologies for applying SolarWindow™ coatings to see-thru glass. Once achieved, researchers surmise such advances could provide significant opportunities to increase the conversion efficiency necessary for high power production and improve the absorbance of natural and artificial light. Unlike conventional solar technologies, New Energy’s SolarWindow™ generates electricity from both natural and artificial light sources, outperforming today’s commercial solar and thin-film technologies by as much as 10-fold under low intensity irradiance.
Among specific initiatives underway, researchers are working to improve the absorbance of light and achieve wider absorption range of solar light. Light wavelength and light intensity are directly related to electrical current and voltage, respectively. Importantly, higher current and voltage provides higher electrical power.
Electrical power is generated on see-thru glass when New Energy’s SolarWindow™ coatings are sprayed onto surfaces using commercially available technologies. This patent-pending process enables researchers to spray SolarWindow™ coatings onto glass at room temperature, eliminating expensive and often cumbersome high-temperature or high-vacuum production methods commonly used by current solar manufacturers.