More Efficient Transparent Solar Panels
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Swiss scientists design more efficient transparent solar panels / euronews.next
One of the major issues inherent in the deployment of current-generation solar panels is that they’re chunky, sometimes difficult to install, and opaque—so they capture the sun, but in doing so cast a shadow on anything behind or underneath them.
There are efforts to convert these downsides into perks that’ve proven effective in some use-cases, like placing rows of solar panels above irrigation canals to keep water cool and reduce water loss to evaporation (a big problem in some areas), but that shadow-casting still an issue in many other contexts.
Creating semi-transparent solar panels (or rather, solar films) would be useful, then, as it would allow this technology to be applied in more contexts, including across the whole of buildings (windows and all).
Such films exist, and are in the process of being refined for increased efficiency and mass-scale production capability.
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