• HIVE 50 CATEGORY: BUILDING TECHNOLOGY


Corey Hoven
Corey Hoven

NEXT Energy Technologies’ transparent photovoltaic coating allows its windows to harvest solar energy at a very low cost without aesthetic impact on the building in which it is installed. The coating can help builders construct net-zero-energy buildings, improving the carbon footprint of the built environment and mitigating climate change, says co-founder and CEO Daniel Emmett.

Daniel Emmett
Daniel Emmett

The company’s core technology is the Solution-processed Small Molecule Organic Photovoltaic, an organic semiconductive coating that is low-cost, nontoxic, and applied to its dual-pane windows in a low-energy printing process. The coating allows visible light through the window as it converts light in the infrared and UV spectrum to energy.

NEXT Energy windows are available for custom order directly from the company in a range of coating transparencies and efficiencies. The clearest coating, a 50% transparent pale blue, provides 7% power conversion efficiency, and the most opaque, a 10% transparent dark blue, provides 10% power conversion efficiency.