Sun shines on solar panels

By Peter Rugh

Your car windows might soon recharge battery while you take a nap

Engineers at Michigan State University announced this month that they had developed the world's first transparent solar panels.One day, while your car sits in the parking lot, its windows might recharge the electric battery. Photovoltaic cells might no longer be confined to rooftops, as windows could become surfaces from which to harness the sun's rays.

Soon, the screen on your smartphone might also power the device itself.Unlike traditional solar panels which are composed of black glass to absorb all types of light, these panels are made up of mirroring sheets of organic salts that act as transparent, luminescent solar concentrators, capturing ultraviolet and infrared light, invisible to the human eye, and harvesting it through miniature plastic solar cells that line the edges of the frames.

“Black solar panels have a limited utility, in terms of where you can put them,“ Jay Guo, lead engineer of the project said.“But if we can make the panels blend in, people will be more willing to deploy them.“