Polysolar technology turns a building into a solar panel

Building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) glazing can help buildings generate their own electricity, by turning the whole building envelope into a solar panel. 

Companies such as Polysolar provide transparent photovoltaic glass as a structural building material, forming windows, façades and roofs. Polysolar’s technology is efficient at producing energy even on north-facing, vertical walls and its high performance at raised temperatures means it can be double glazed or insulated directly. As well as saving on energy bills and earning feed-in tariff revenues, its cost is only marginal over traditional glass, since construction and framework costs remain, while cladding and shading system costs are replaced.

Polysolar uses thin-film PV technology to manufacture BIPV photovoltaic solar glass. The material is ideal for BIPV solutions, enabling to produce transparent or opaque solar PV panels.

Thin-film is a relatively mature technology, benefiting from several decades of development and widely deployed around the world.

The active material is deposited as a thin, naturally translucent layer on a conductive glass substrate. BIPV panels was manufactured by vacuum depositing an ultra-thin film of the PV absorber on a conductive TCO glass surface then laminating another glass sheet on top.

Designed specifically for BIPV applications, thin-film technology offers performance advantages through:

• Good absorbance at low light levels—operating down to 10 percent of sunlight. Extending the hours of operation through a day and over a year

• Resilient against shading – the panel design allows connection of short strings in parallel so shading of one area doesn’t impact on the whole string

• Superior heat tolerance – the panels are less effected by high temperatures so it does not require ventilation to optimally operate

• Tough, rigid panels—the laminated glass makes the panels suitable for overhead building applications

• Comparable installed costs compared to conventional building materials—the multifunctional substitution of conventional building materials means the cost for installation is similar on a m² basis as conventional glazing.