A research team from the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) in South Korea has developed transparent solar cell technology capable of directly charging a battery from a glass surface. This innovation offers numerous applications, allowing for direct energy generation from sources like smartphone screens, car windows, and building facades.
Great points.
Regular solar cells with better efficiency are already are thing, even in a compact travel format or as a novelty part of some electric cars. Those are cheap to produce, but still aren’t practical at all, unless we’re talking about something like a 2m² solar panel to charge a phone in a somewhat reasonable time on a very sunny day in an off-grid situation.
Using transparent solar cells additionally to regular ones in buildings instead of windows is pretty much the only reasonable application I can think of right now, but with a visible transmittance of 20% that’s kinda farfetched as well.