According to Interesting Engineering, transparent solar panels represent a new type of technology that is able to collect solar power through glass surfaces, such as windows.

Due to this, it can help us implement solar harnessing tech at a much broader scale than before.

Engineers were able to develop some transparent solar panels that capture sunlight, such as UV and infrared, and use this energy to power electronics that we use on a daily basis.

The technology is called photovoltaic glass and in 2014, a team of scientists at Michigan State University developed a completely transparent solar concentrator which could replace nearly all windows.

European and American scientists also managed to make a fully transparent solar glass which could, theoretically, replace all windows and enable buildings to become independent of the power grid.

With an estimated 5 to 7 billion square meters of glass surfaces being present in the US alone, the potential of this new technology could be huge, if we can implement it properly.

One example of a building that implemented this innovative form of harvesting solar power is Copenhagen International School, which uses 12.000 tinted windows that act as solar panels.

With those, it is able to produce some 200 MWh of power per year, which is more than half of what the building consumes.

This means that, while not all buildings will be fully independent from the power grid, they will be able to significantly reduce their energy consumption and even have some form of power source in case of and outage.