EPFL is going to showoff with their new convention center by making power from its colorful glass façade. This is the first architectural integration of dye solar cells technology at this scale, and it’s achieved in partnership with Romande Energie with a goal to develop a large-scale solar park and conduct research and development projects… »

Collaboration between researchers at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) and researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) resulted in development of a solar-microbial device that produces hydrogen gas and electricity using sunlight and wastewater as the only energy sources. By combining solar and microbial technology, it provides a sustainable energy source while improving… »

When you hear someone talking about solar panels, you imagine the black or bluish-gray colored panels. However, various groups of researchers are contributing to changes which help designers and architects in their goal for aesthetics. With the help of thin-film technologies, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute managed to contribute to this cause by turning solar… »

There are various attempts to transform windows and glazed facades into means able to generate electricity, thus providing a potentially cheap and easy to implement power-generating opportunity. Researchers from Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) are developing luminescent solar concentrators – a type of windows fitted with a thin film of material that absorbs sunlight… »

Even though silicon is one of the most abundant elements, the energy required to make silicon from sand is immense. A group of researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) developed a new nanopatterning technique which boosts the output of the cells, thus enabling manufacture of solar cells that are one… »

Researchers from Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE) have created a new polymer that can be used in both new age plastic electronics as well as plastic solar cells. The new polymer enables thinner and  lighter electronic components and organic solar cells which can be produced… »

Nearly invisible millimeter-scale systems could enable computing to be used nearly in everything around us, and the researchers from the University of Michigan (U-M) claim that’s the future of the industry. They point to Bell’s Law, which says there’s a new class of smaller, cheaper computers about every decade. They plan to use their miniature… »

A new technique developed by Princeton University engineers for producing electricity-conducting plastics could dramatically lower the cost of manufacturing solar panels. By overcoming technical hurdles to producing plastics that are translucent, malleable and able to conduct electricity, the researchers have opened the door to broader use of the materials in a wide range of electrical… »