Skylights are the latest in today’s building design and they make for a great view and help to cut down on artificial lighting in the daytime. Now, they are about to provide electricity to actually run that artificial lighting and other electrical equipment. Offices have varied electricity requirements ranging from air conditioning to central heating, in case of power cuts, every office and mall is dependent on diesel run generators. Skylights are about to change that forever. California based EnFocus has come up with a two way solution. The specifically designed diamond power panels by the company not only reduce the intensity of sunlight to avoid overheating, but use that extra energy to create electricity also.
The design is restricted to commercial buildings only. The design basically consists of weatherproof panels, weighing around 100 pounds each. The panel body consists of series of lenses to concentrate the available sunlight by four hundred times. The concentrated light falls on high efficiency cells made up of Gallium Arsenic photovoltaic. These lenses are also placed on the dual axis tracker, which in turn allows them to rotate under the sun throughout the day.
The average output of every individual panel is 288W. As the company claims, each panel is capable of 720KWh of electricity generation on annual basis. At the same time, they can also provide 1,490KWh amount of lighting. Each panel also successfully decreases the building’s heat load by approximately 2.1 million BTUs per year. The figure can vary from state to state depending on the sunlight hours. The major breakthrough claimed by EnFocus is that their diamond power panels are capable of reducing the building’s electricity bills by almost 50 percent. The installation cost is recovered in a time span of five years.
Via: Gizmag
