A Colorful Approach to Solar Energy

Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have successfully created a sophisticated, yet affordable, method to turn ordinary glass into a high-tech solar concentrator. Electrical engineer Marc Baldo, his graduate students Michael Currie, Jon Mapel and Timothy Heidel, and postdoctoral associate Shalom Goffri developed the concentrator made from dye-coated glass and announced their findings in the July 11, 2008, issue of Science. The device collects and channels photons otherwise lost from a solar panel’s surface, dramatically boosting solar cell performance. In this video, Baldo explains the technology and its potential impact on the future of energy.

For more on this story, visit www.figbranch.com

Credit: MIT