Clearview Power — Solar Charging Your Device, With No Visible Panels!
Standing at the beginning of a revolution.
Imagine if all you had to do to charge your phone, or any electronic device for that matter, was to put it in direct sunlight, no additional devices, chargers — just your device and that is it.
Charging a device from sunlight sounds like stuff of science fiction, and until recently it certainly was.
Using sunlight to generate power is not a new concept. Solar panels are used around the world to generate energy, and are one of the most environment friendly ways to do so. Why had we not been able to yet make them a mobile thing however? The premise behind that was simple: to generate electricity the surface needs to absorb energy and to absorb energy the surface has to be dense, and opaque. An opaque surface on an electronic device beats the purpose of a screen altogether, however Ubiquitous Energy has found a way around it with their Clearview Power Technology.
Silicon Valley based company Ubiquitous Energy has come up with the technology to manufacture transparent solar panels, certainly standing at the beginning of a revolution. The transparent solar panel designed by the company is virtually indistinguishable from your average piece of glass. What this transparent panel does is it captures light invisible to the human eye, which means that the surface keeps on appearing transparent to the human eye. It then uses this captured light to generate energy. The captured infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths are directed to the edge of the panel, where traditional photovoltaic material transforms it into electricity.
Ubiquitous Energy has managed to allow 90% of the visible light to pass through while only absorbing the UV and Infrared spectrum, is a 1/1000th of a millimeter thick, is made up of low-cost, non-toxic materials and has an efficiency of over 10% in energy conversion.
What needs to be noted here is that this technology is currently at extremely nascent stages of development and the company would need resources and time to make it viable for common use, however it certainly does open up new possibilities where every transparent surface with access to sun could be used to generate energy.
The company right now however plans to start out small, with wearables and smart devices. CEO, Miles Barr, in an interview with DigitalTrends said ‘With the world’s first truly transparent solar technology we are able to use the full surface of these products for energy harvesting without impacting aesthetics or function’.
A transparent solar panel would enable your smart devices to virtually stay the way they are right now, except it would just transition your screens into energy generators, like magic. This would give the devices an extended battery life, for starters, and it might in the long run even eliminate the need for a battery to exist within the device.
One obvious question to raise would also be of the financials. Such a technology is certainly revolutionary, but how economical would it really be? The logistics of it would need to be worked out by the company and the manufacturers before that question is answered.
One thing however is certain, that the market would have place for such a product, if not for the economics or effectiveness of it, then just for the fun of it. A few people certainly wouldn’t mind paying an extra buck to have their smart devices charged by the sunlight.
The large scale revolution that this new technological advancement could bring is the way architecture works. The exteriors of the buildings, which today are mostly made of glass, could use this particular material, giving us buildings and window panes that unobtrusively generate energy.
The company is reportedly already partnering with manufacturers and other commercial companies to bring solar powered consumer technology products to market even quicker. It, however, is certainly a matter of a few years before the market sees anything like that for sale at your average electronics store.
Originally published at Chip-Monks.
