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MIT News Office

Imagine windows that not only provide a clear view and illuminate rooms, but also use sunlight to efficiently help power the building they are part of. MIT engineers report a new approach to harnessing the sun's energy that could allow just that.

The work, to be reported in the July 11 issue of Science, involves the creation of a novel "solar concentrator." "Light is collected over a large area [like a window] and gathered, or concentrated, at the edges," explains Marc A. Baldo, leader of the work and the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Career Development Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering.

As a result, rather than covering a roof with expensive solar cells (the semiconductor devices that transform sunlight into electricity), the cells only need to be around the edges of a flat glass panel. In addition, the focused light increases the electrical power obtained from each solar cell "by a factor of over 40," Baldo says.

According to the article, three of the inventors have launched a spin-off company to bring the technology to market, hopefully within three years. Other reports say the technology won't necessarily be suitable for windows, but might work as a skylight.

The Calgary Herald reports that EEStor is "expected to release the results of independent third-party testing" of it's capacitor based battery system "sometime over the next several weeks." According to the article, EEStor says the system will be "commercially ready within six months."

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Wired has a cool story about an engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory who is working on a prototype plug-in hybrid that can go 50 miles on a charge, gets 100MPG, and has a solar panel on the roof that will power the car for five miles.

The car is a converted Toyota Prius, with advanced lithium-ion batteries. It's charged using an external solar array. One of their areas of research is li-ion battery efficiency and thermal management.