The Center for Architecture Science and Ecology (CASE) located in New York, NY has come up with an ingenious way to capture the Sun’s rays - use office windows as solar power generators to augment or power the building. ‘The reason we’re interested in windows is because they have the largest surface areas, typically, in buildings - especially in tall, urban buildings,’ said Anna Dyson head of CASE and a professor of architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. ‘We have a lot of vertical surface area to work with to really generate a lot of power.’ The new technology, called ‘integrated concentrating dynamic solar façade’, consists of a grid of clear pyramids that are inserted on a window or the building’s façade. The pyramids contain a lens that is capable of focusing sunlight by more than 400 times onto a highly efficient solar cell. The pyramids were designed to rotate to follow the Sun across its daily path through the sky maximizing the solar potential. The solar cells generate the electricity needed to heat, cool, and light the building. The solar cells are cooled with a fluid that also captures the waste heat that was not […]