Beautiful and practical, here comes the smart window
Nowadays, glass windows are everywhere in cities, as it is a desirable material for the design of buildings. However, issues caused by those beautiful skyscrapers can be eyebrow-raising. According to researches, 70% of one city’s electricity is consumed by buildings, and HVAC loads comprise 40% of a building’s energy use to compensate for the heat gain or loss through windows, which, for global warming concerns, makes glass towers the targets of lawmakers.
Do we have to forbid construction of all-glass buildings? Definitely no. Technology provides sustainability without compromising comfortable conditions, which is, the smart windows. Made from electrochromic glass(EC), these windows can sense the level and intensity of natural light, tinting automatically (or on demand) to moderate solar heat and glare. Thus, by intelligently optimizing tinting in response to weather conditions, the load on indoor lighting, heating and cooling systems is reduced, saving up to 20% in energy consumption.
From my point of view, though the future buildings will undoubtedly benefit a lot from smart windows, the problem now lies in how to replace the existing windows with a better solution as they age, given the explosion of glass buildings over the past decades.
