Visually appealing solar panels for façades

The start-up Solar Visuals created an energy generating façade material that is efficient and visually appealing.

Solar Visuals are high-tech PV modules that combine high performance with an aesthetic appearance to enable the application of solar power on a larger scale. Currently, solar panels are mostly reserved for rooftops and are not generally attractive.

Solar Visual’s aim is to transform all buildings, from housing blocks to large urban mixed-use projects, city halls and shopping malls, or even infrastructural works, such as bridges and sound barriers, into power plants. The panels are designed to be integrated seamlessly into the façades of buildings.

The modules consist of multiple layers: a layer of photovoltaic material that generates energy, with a sustainable full-colour print layer over it. The print layer can be any image: from photo prints, images of famous paintings or abstract patterns.

The technique is capable of translating images into a setup of dots of different coverage ratios, controlling colour, contrast, brightness and a degree of randomness in the final effect. It is based on the principle of rasterization and plays with the human eye. If you focus, you see separate dots, but if you look at the whole, you can see an amalgamated image.

Solar Visuals was nominated for the Clean Energy Challenge.

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Photos: Solar Visuals