The reason these ideas have not been commercialized, is that the vested interest in big oil is overwhelming.

It's a pretty simple choice in November - either Americans own America or Oil Companies do.

We put 2 oil stooges in the white house and got $4 gas.  this has got to end.

If the cell allows the light to pass through, then it cannot use that light to generate electricity.  Why do people get so excited about something-for-nothing claims?  

Most of the light that hits plants is not used in photosynthesis -- I believe less than 5% is captured by chloroplasts. So, IF this were ACTUALLY technologically feasible, and just a fifth or a quarter of the light were captured and the rest allowed to filter through windows to still provide ambient lighting, it would be a very interesting and useful inventions.

Lotta ifs. Consider me very skeptical. Possible, but proof in the pudding and all that.

Read the full paper in this month's Science Magazine...if you can understand it, that is. :) Here's an excerpt:

Photovoltaic (PV) concentrators aim to increase the electrical power obtained from solar cells. Conventional solar concentrators track the Sun to generate high optical intensities, often by using large mobile mirrors that are expensive to deploy and maintain. Solar cells at the focal point of the mirrors must be cooled, and the entire assembly wastes space around the perimeter to avoid shadowing neighboring concentrators.

High optical concentration without excess heating in a stationary system can be achieved with a luminescent solar concentrator (LSC) (1-5). LSCs consist of a dye dispersed in a transparent waveguide. Incident light is absorbed by the dye and then reemitted into a waveguide mode. The energy difference between absorption and emission prevents reabsorption of light by the dye, isolating the concentrated photon population in the waveguide. In this way, LSCs can achieve high optical concentrations without solar tracking (6). Unfortunately, the performance of LSCs has been limited by self-absorption losses that restrict the maximum possible concentration factor. Here we describe an efficient variant of an LSC that mimics a four-level laser design and exhibits optical concentrations suitable for practical applications.

Typically, LSC dye molecules are cast into a transparent plastic sheet; however, we deposited a thin film of organic dye molecules onto glass. Our devices were fabricated with thermal evaporation, but solution processing could also be used. Precise control over the film composition allowed us to apply the recent advances of organic optoelectronics to LSCs, including Förster energy transfer (7), solid state solvation (8), and phosphorescence (9). We term the resulting devices organic solar concentrators (OSCs).

To obtain the highest power efficiencies, we constructed tandem OSCs (2). Incident solar radiation first encounters an OSC employing a short-wavelength dye. Longer wavelengths are transmitted through the first OSC and absorbed by a longer-wavelength dye in a second OSC (Fig. 1). Alternatively, solar radiation transmitted through the top OSC can be gathered by a bottom PV cell or used to heat water in a hybrid PV thermal system (2).

They haven't proven that this will work or be cost-effective on a large scale, but they've certainly proved the concept, which is actually very simple and elegant.

Large-scale/cost-effectiveness seems always to be the hitch in the giddyup when it comes to these types of invetions. Hopefully, it will work.

Most good science is simple and elegant. Current solar cell science strikes me as way too complicated and expensive to ever truly work (besides running out of silicon, indium, gallium, selenium, etc., that you need for the absorbers).

I'm a big believer that eventually solar will solve all our problems, from biotechnologically engineering microbes to directly produce liquid fuels for automobiles/transportation (alcohols and/or hydrocarbons) from sunlight + water + salt (e.g., without having to convert everything to biomass first and THEN fermenting the feedstock into ethanol via yeast) to discovering ways to harvest natural plant mechanisms to directly convert photoenergy into electricity (e.g., mimicking a chloroplast in solar cells).

However, we need the government to implement policies that encourage investment and R&D in these arenas for that to occur.  

Right now, the government isn't doing nearly enough, given the urgency of the situation from an environmental and national security standpoint.

don't know what they're talking about?  Mmmmkay.

a few like that.  One of my postdocs from MCV is now a professor in EE at MIT and he could verify that for you also.  He went to the top rather quickly because he was very good but also because much of  the competition was weak.

We have blinds on our sun room windows that let plenty of light through yet filter a lot of infra red.  And then there are sunglasses.  They filter UV.  In fact the way matter interacts with electromagnetic radiation is at the molecular level.  Photons of a very particular frequency (in other words wave length) interact with a molecule raising certain of its electrons to a higher energy level.  The frequecies not absorbed (Most of them) go right on by.

Lightwaves bend when they encounter and pass through a transparent substance--much the same way light bends when it hits the atmosphere.  The coating on the glass causes more of the light to bend towards the edges of the glass, in essense trapping it, much the same way green-house gasses trap in the energy generated by the sun.  A better example might be a fish-tank filled with water.

You probably can't see as clearly through one of these windows because not all of the light passes through it, much like you can't see as clearly underwater and you get some color fade towards the blue end of the color spectrum.  It is theoretically feasible, however.  And one interesting possible application is using it to manufacture convention solar panels--rather than lining the entire back with photovoltaic cells, mirror back a pane of glass to reflect the light that isn't captured by the glass back into it (in essence letting it get captured twice) and then line the edge with the cells.

So you can use this technology without making your windows work like sunglasses.

They have a neat picture of different panes of glass bending different wavelengths of light towards the surface edge, yet the panes are still basically transparent.  So you can see through the glass, but the edge glows in the dark.  Really neat.

Very exciting breakthrough, this could be revolutionary.

I feel like I just heard an inspiring church sermon, except this one's actually based on science!  Woo-hooo!

At that time a high percentage of the houses had solar panels on them.  As a membrane biophysicist I was working on desalination.  Could it be that we are a wee bit behind?  

Oh and as a family of four we paid $10.00 a month for complete health care coverage, that is everything, hiospitalization, doctors, dentist, prescription and non prescription drugs, etc.  Because my post doc pay was as high as an Israeli Professor's pay we paid the maximum possible rate.

You don't need to recommend it.