Imagine a conservatory roof that looks like shaded glass by day, but by evening is transformed into a patchwork quilt of gentle white LED lights. Well, it - Sharp's LumiWall (far left) - is coming your way, and it's powered entirely by thin-film solar panels inside the glass. So you could even use the stuff for glass in an off-grid geodisic dome in the middle of your garden. If that pushes your buttons.
The LumiWall glass was just one of the cool things I got to poke and prod at a trip to Sharp's solar factory last Thursday. It's up in Wrexham - home, surprise, surprise, to Wrexham lager - and churns out an incredible 2,4000 solar panels every day.
Aside from LumiWall, which is due on sale in 2007, I also discovered how thin solar cells are (paper-thin and as brittle as lasagne pasta), heard Sharp's plans to make solar trendy and aspirational, and (the bad bit) heard why the price of panels won't be dropping massively anytime soon, as the cost of the raw materials shows no sign of dropping.
Still, Sharp does have a cunning plan to drop prices a bit, namely by slicing the main ingredient of solar cells - silicon - even thinner than it does now. Using its fancy new cheese slicer in Japan, the cells will soon be 150 microns rather than 180 thick. Mighty thin, basically.
There's also some exciting news due from Sharp later this summer but, um, I'm not allowed to tell anyone about it yet. More here when the date comes.
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I did call Sharp, and it seams that only USA will have LumiWall... what a pity!
Also, Velux Electrochromatic glass will be able outside EU.
Estimado cliente,
Los acristalamientos electrocrómicos no están disponibles en el mercado europeo por el momento. No disponemos de información sobre fecha de comercialización.
Saludos cordiales / With kind regards,
Juan Alonso Sánchez
VELUX Spain, S.A.
Marketing - Oficina Técnica
Ctra La Coruña Km 18.150 Edificio VELUX
28231 LAS ROZAS
Posted by: Jacob | December 18, 2006 at 09:59 AM