GreenSun Energy claims to have  developed a new kind of solar panel that will revolutionize solar energy. The panels are cheaper to manufacture than conventional solar panels and are able to convert diffused or direct light into energy.

The use of diffused light allows the panel to work in cloudy environments where solar power would normally not be a viable solution (albeit less effectively than in sunny environments). Diffused light also reduces construction costs in three ways: by allowing a panel to produce as much electricity as a regular panel five times its size, eliminating the need for a solar tracking system used by conventional panels to align with the sun and reducing the amount of retained heat thereby eliminating the need for a cooling system.

"We have developed a luminescence solar concentrator, which concentrates solar light from a big plate, glass plate, it converts it to the edges of the plate, so instead to cover the entire plate with solar cells, that are so expensive, we can use only a small part of solar cells,” Renata Reisfeld, the chief technology officer at GreenSun Energy, told the National Geographic.

According to GreenSun, the panels will soon have an efficiency of approximately 20 percent as compared to the 10–16 percent found in standard solar panels. As a result, the cost per watt will be slashed. While the panel will produce 200 watts of electricity and cost $189 to manufacture ($.94 per watt) existing systems the vendor claims costs $900 to manufacture and produces only 180 watts ($4.54 per watt).

Being able to lower per watt costs could make solar-generated electricity price competitive with traditional methods and offer a financially viable alternative to fossil fuels. Such a move could impact the development of the smart grid by reducing the demand for additional transmission and distribution system being built in areas where alternative energy solutions haven’t been feasible. 

The solar panel’s ability to absorb energy from indirect sunlight also means that the panels could be deployed on the sides of buildings as well. Such a move could enable the building to generate its own electricity.

“If the photovoltaics [PV] were installed on facilities that have good building energy management systems, the total package could minimize the PV intermittency impacts onto the grid by balancing the solar generation against in-premise loads [e.g., dial back the HVAC system when a cloud passes over the PV, and ramp it up as PV output increases]," says Alison Silverstein, an energy consultant, “But this means that it's not a PV-only or a grid-design-only issue, but a need to plan and install technologies that complement and integrate together for maximum value and grid impact.”

GreenSun, though, isn’t the only vendor pursuing a new solar horizon. Solar PV costs have decreased by about 30 to 40 percent in the last year. “This is due to a variety of factors including the global economic downturn, Spain’s slashing of their incentives [they had 41 percent of the market in 2008], increasing competition, and continued research and development,” notes Neal Lurie, director of marketing and communications for the American Solar Energy Society. As a result, Lurie notes that solar costs today are much lower than they once were. First Solar, for example, is producing solar modules at about 87 cents/watt, he says.

Even then most buildings may not need to generate their own electricity in the first place. “With so many other things building owners can and should do first to manage their electricity demand, attempting to be their own producer of electricity is way down on the list of cost-effective energy conservation strategies,” writers Peter Pfeiffer, president of Barley & Pfeiffer Architects, an Austin-based firm specializing in sustainable building architectures. “My experience with this stuff over the past quarter of a century is that one can get between five times and 10 times the return on his investment by implementing energy demand management strategies first as compared to renewable energy strategies.”