Coloured cover glasses for highly efficient BIPV

With its new brand ‘ipasolar’, AGC Interpane Architectural Glass now offers coloured magnetron coatings for cover glass on photovoltaic modules, which also guarantee a high efficiency of 90 to 96 per cent (depending on the reflective colour) compared to an uncoated black module. The new coatings are available in the initial standard colours of terracotta, green, blue, yellow, orange, red, bronze, gold, silver and ‘pearl mouse grey’, but can also be supplied in custom colours on request – up to the tape measure size, depending on the white glass substrates used by the module manufacturers.

In order for building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) to be incorporated into architects’ planning processes at an early stage, in addition to already excellent efficiency levels, greater flexibility is needed in terms of module sizes and the colour of the cover glass so that the appearance of modern façade concepts can be customised. ‘With ipasolar, we offer a solution that gives module manufacturers and architects freedom in terms of colour design,’ explains Steffen Kittler (Sales Manager, AGC Interpane Architectural Glass). The basic idea and the original patent for coloured magnetron coating came from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (Fraunhofer ISE) in Freiburg: rough white glass substrates for uniform and high light scattering are coated with coloured ‘MorphoColor’ magnetron coatings for low angle dependence in terms of efficiency. The excellent colour homogeneity, even on large-format substrates, and the upscaling for the first large BIPV projects were achieved in collaboration with licensee AGC Plasma (Lauenförde), which, alongside Fraunhofer ISE and photovoltaic module manufacturer Axsun (near Ulm), were funding partners: The development was supported by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection in the ‘PVHide’ project from December 2019 to November 2022.

The distribution under the new brand name ‘ipasolar’ is managed by AGC Interpane Architectural Glass in order to bring the technology to international architecture with a high level of project expertise.