Self-Powered System tagged posts

Self-Powered System makes Smart Windows Smarter

Graduate student Nicholas Davy holds a sample of the special window glass. (Photos by David Kelly Crow)

Graduate student Nicholas Davy holds a sample of the special window glass. (Photos by David Kelly Crow)

Smart windows equipped with controllable glazing can augment lighting, cooling and heating systems by varying their tint, saving up to 40% in an average building’s energy costs. These smart windows require power for operation, so they are relatively complicated to install in existing buildings. But by applying a new solar cell technology, researchers at Princeton University have developed a different type of smart window: a self-powered version that promises to be inexpensive and easy to apply to existing windows. This system features solar cells that selectively absorb near-UVz light, so the new windows are completely self-powered.

“Sunlight is a mixture of electromagnetic radiation mad...

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