Largest-ever OPV module created at NREL’s labs

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  Dr. Scott Hammond, principal scientist, works on development of the SolarWindow module. Image: New Energy Technologies
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  NREL & New Energy Development Team (from left to right): Heather Platt, PhD, Scientist, NREL; David Ginley, PhD, Scientist, Research Fellow, NREL; Dana Olson, PhD, Scientist, NREL; Eric Payne, Senior Licensing Executive, NREL; John Conklin, New Energy; Maikel van Hest, PhD, Scientist, NREL; Scott Hammond, PhD, Principal Scientist, New Energy; and Anne Miller, Agreements Specialist and Licensing Executive, NREL. Image: New Energy Technologies

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has, in collaboration with New Energy Technologies, produced its largest-area OPV module ever at 170cm². The companies’ engineers have worked together on developing New Energy’s SolarWindow technology that allows the generation of electricity on see-through glass windows.

New Energy’s SolarWindow module is said to be more than 14 times larger in area than OPV devices previously fabricated by NREL. This achievement represents an important step in the commercialization of BIPV technologies, with researchers having already investigated and made use of a high-speed/large-area solution-coating process, allowing for rapid scale-up to larger glass surface areas.

Dr. Scott Hammond, New Energy’s principal scientist, worked with NREL’s researchers at lab scale to develop the solution-processable coating technique in order to deposit see-through electricity-generating coatings on to glass surfaces. The coatings consist mainly of polymers that are designed and produced by means of organic synthesis and then applied to glass.

 “The fabrication of a large-area see-through solar module of these dimensions is an important step in New Energy’s SolarWindow ongoing development,” commented Dr. David S. Ginley, NREL Research Fellow and an expert in the fields of transparent conductors and OPV. “We believe that building integrated applications provide a promising avenue for OPV deployment and we are continuing to work with New Energy Technologies to further address scale-up, a key milestone toward developing a deployable technology.”