Brite Solar presented its idea for the future of cities and infrastructure to VINCI in Paris on July 9th 2018

Transparent solar panels seen from below

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French building and civil engineering group VINCI invited small companies funded by the European Innovation Council (EIC) pilot’s SME Instrument to present their vision for building tomorrow’s structures and infrastructure.

Brite was one of the selected companies that gathered at Leonard, VINCI’S new Group-wide innovation and foresight platform in Paris, to present their ideas and business cases to VINCI representatives.

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Related material: the project, press coverage and the collaborators behind the technology.

How the glass is built

The panel is a laminate: an active layer carried between sheets of architectural glass, sealed at the edges and mounted in the same profiles a greenhouse or facade already uses. Nothing about the installation asks the builder to learn a new trade, which matters more for adoption than any laboratory figure.

Transparency is the design parameter that everything else follows from. A pane that passes most of the visible light leaves the crop unaffected but generates modestly; one that passes less produces more current and starts to shade. The specification is chosen per project, against the crop and the latitude it will grow at.