Australian smart building materials company ClearVue Technologies Limited has developed new product designs for its solar-integrated glass. The ability for ClearVue to now be able to offer a power-producing single-glazed laminated glass product and double-glazed low-emissions insulated glass (IGU) product in addition to its existing triple-glazed design is significant, says the company.
New double-glazed IGU prototype design.
A trial run of the triple-glazed solar glass from 2020 showed the glass could produce 40 W of energy per square meter. The transparent product uses monocrystalline PV cell application methods. The power rating for the single-glazed design (30 W/m2) has been tested and determined at standard test conditions (STC). The double-glazed panels are expected to generate slightly more power than the single-glazed design, but full testing has not yet been completed.
“The ClearVue team in conjunction with D2 solar have worked hard over the last approximately 18 months to develop the new triple glazed design and have extended that work to produce these new single-glazed and double-glazed designs,” said Victor Rosenberg, ClearVue executive chairman. “The addition of single-glazed and double-glazed product designs to the ClearVue product suite is a major leap forward for the company with the single and double glazing perfectly suited to many retrofit applications including in our key sales territories of the U.S. and Europe, is well suited to automotive applications and is applicable for use in countries where multi-glazing is yet to make an impact.”
According to a press release from the company:
The new single glazed and double-glazed designs are a major step forward for ClearVue and significantly expand the company’s opportunities for sales into markets where triple-glazed is not applicable, or otherwise readily accepted currently. Equatorial geographies such as in South East Asia where the sun is at a high angle have traditionally been slow to adopt multi-glazed solutions. China has a wide range of temperatures including much colder temperatures where multi-glazed formats although logical, grapple with the additional cost introduced by the multiple layers of glass in multi-glazed designs. The company expects that the single glazed and double-glazed designs will mean the path to market in regions such as these will now be much smoother.
ClearVue also expects that the single glazed version of the product will be well suited to transport applications including automotive where many new electric and other vehicle designs integrate a dynamically tintable panaromic glass roof into their design. The company is confident that the single glazed design can be integrated with these types of products eliminating the need for power draw from an electric car’s batteries.
The double-glazed design is also perfect for the retrofit market including the very large market for building upgrades to meet new and revised building codes necessary to meet net-zero requirements in places like New York City and Chicago, and also Europe, where the company has been focusing its marketing efforts over the last 12 months. Many older buildings in such places have heritage requirements and do not permit significant changes to the exterior. The ability to replace and upgrade the existing glazing to power producing energy efficient glazing without materially changing the building appearance represents a significant opportunity for the ClearVue to cater to all retrofit projects where single, double or triple glazing might be specified.
The solar glass designs are still at the trial and testing stages, but ClearVue stated a commercial-ready product could be available in 2022. Development and testing of these products have been in conjunction with California solar engineering company D2 Solar.
