One of the biggest energy requirement for a city is to heat or cool down buildings and houses. It is not easy to design a place that will be warm in the winter, and stay cool in the summer, and one way to do this in an energy-efficient way is by using sunlight as it’s free and quite abundant. The idea of having highly reflective Windows is not new: many buildings are already using this. However, their cost made them only accessible to the richest builders.
DigiinfoTV met with Japanese Researchers who have demonstrated a film that can go from translucent to “mirror-like” reflective in a matter of minutes. It that can be easily and cheaply placed onto existing Windows and may prove to be a much cheaper alternative to existing solutions. Researchers also point out that exiting electro-chemical glass are not only expensive, but they also take more time to switch depending on the size of the window.
Right now, this film material can switch back and forth in 10 minutes, but this team is confident that it can build a model with a much faster switch. It’s conceivable that the switch can be controlled by a computer to manage temperature, but in my view, the low-cost is the main advantage of this technology at the moment. Is that something that you would want to have for your home?