this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2026
216 points (97.4% liked)
science
29013 readers
618 users here now
A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.
dart board;; science bs
rule #1: be kind
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Sure, but a solar panel of the same size on the wall next to the window capturing 100% of the light is already (100-VLTrating) more effective than the solar window. Bring mounted vertically on a wall makes it like 25% as effective as the same panel placed on the ground, which makes it like 50% as effective as a properly mounted panel on a roof.
So assuming you've what would be a 100W potential equivalent panel on a 50%VLT window, you're getting 6.25W out of that 100W, and that's assuming that these 50VLT windows panels operate just as efficiently as a conventional panel, which I'm gonna guess they don't, but I don't have rough numbers for that particular comparison.
Unless the window panel somehow outperforms the efficiency of a conventional panel (doubtful), it's going to just be a huge waste of money, and if it does outperform the conventional panel, we'd just mount a 0VLT "window" like a conventional panel and still get over 4x the production. It's a patently ridiculous idea that takes literal seconds to determine it's a waste of time and money, and mere minutes to do the math to show it.
Before you tear apart my numbers, yes, I did ballpark the efficiency of those angles. I'd did a lot of math calculating a roof mounted vs free standing fixed vs free standing single axis movable vs free standing dual axis movable mounts for a solar pergola that I want to build but lack the funds to setup, so I know roughly how much power you get out of panels at different angles. The numbers are ballparked, but feel free to use whatever actual efficiency numbers you can find, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find real-world values that put the window above 10% of the total output of a traditional panel.
On the move but looking forward to reading - thanks for taking the time
Yeah, 10% seems reasonable. Maybe even a bit optimistic. Does VLT = visible light transmission?
Yes.