Adjusting Window Tints to Let Light Pass … or Not

 

You don’t need to pull down the shades with a new type of window called electrodynamic windows or electrochromic windows.  A slight electric current can change the glass from fully transparent to nontransparent.  That means that a picture window might keep light outside on a hot day, especially if none of the occupants were home during the day.  Conversely, the window could be made transparent for letting heat radiate out if the outdoors cooled enough at night … or simply to get a view.  The windows would work the opposite way to allow winter sunlight to warm the inside via transparent windows.

These windows could reduce energy requirements for heating and cooling by about 10%.  That's more than $19 billion less in utility bills.  As such, they could be a major addition to the effects of increased insulation and installation of photovoltaic panels. 

However, they are now considered “premium glass,” meaning that they are at the high end of affordability.  Will production of these electrochromic glasses go down a learning curve to lower cost and greater affordability?  Will rising energy costs from various reasons raise energy costs to make the exotic windows more competitive?   Stay tuned.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Look to the Weeds in Saving the World before Breakfast

  For thousands of years, farmers have wailed on weeds with hoes and plucked bugs off their plants.   They have fought back much more powerfully in the 1900s and 2000s with power weeders, pesticides, and herbicides. But, the pests and weeds need not be problems.   Sometimes, they can be part of the solution in developing a more efficient food-producing system.   That better food production is something humanity will need to feed a bigger population coming and for doing that despite serious global warming that might also be coming.   Hello, I’m Roger Carlson. I wrote the books, Saving the World Before Breakfast: A Better Green New Deal , and Saving the World Before Breakfast: The Earth Alone Can Save Us.   A key theme in those books is transforming problems into parts of the solution.   Let’s start with the so-called weeds and pests that become contributors when associated with one particular tiny fern, azolla. For centuries, East Asian farmers have raised fish along with ric
Read more

2023 Climate Skeptics Conference: "We’re Winning!" No, They’re Not—But How they Could Win

  2023 Climate Skeptics Conference: "We’re Winning!"   No, They’re Not—But How they Could Win In February, I attended the 2023 Heartland Institute 15th International Conference on Climate Change discussing hardcore skepticism about global warming.   Most of the press and public consider global warming (which they now call climate change) a possible end-of-the-world threat.   Heartland is the foremost exception.   Heartland began in 1984, “… to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems.”   They soon zeroed in on predictions of catastrophic global warming and have been fiercely skeptical of it ever since.   This year’s 2023 conference continued the tradition.   The conference included high caliber climate scientists, economists, and energy experts, many whom are retired or otherwise insulated from possible loss of government funding. At every Heartland conference, the presentations target fallacies in the theory of a massive
Read more

Every Little Energy Bit Helps

Every Little Energy Bit Helps…And Every Eccentric Bit…and Every Bottom-Line Bit Every little bit helps! Every little bit helps! That was a line from a new group in the 1970s—the environmentalists. They had big ideas about cleaning all the smoke stacks of America. They also had little ideas. One of the little ideas was a brick in the toilette tank. One brick saved about one quart per flush with the resulting savings in water and water purification chemicals. AND if all the toilettes in America had a brick…. Let’s start with a serious concern about energy. Petroleum geologist M. King Hubbert said that petroleum production is like a bell-shaped curve. Production of oil for our cars goes steeply up to a peak.…. Then, it goes steeply down. In 1956, Hubbert said that oil production in the lower forty-eight states would peak about 1970. People laughed…until 1970 when it happened. Now, other geologists are saying there is a similar curve for world oil production. And that peak might be roughly
Read more