The Solar Glass Market - Applications, Requirements and Trends

Dr. Thomas Hofmann

Global warming, increasing numbers of nature catastrophes and decreasing oil resources lead to a rethinking about future energy strategies.
Therefore regenerative energy sources get into the focus of a medium and long term energy concept. Especially solar energy generation can play a major role because of its endless availability.

Within the last decade Solar Thermal and Photovoltaic systems came up from a technically driven laboratory scale to a rapidly growing industry. Production and installation of solar systems is currently the only industry sector characterized by a yearly growth of 20 - 30 %. In 2008, an area of 30 - 40 Mio.m² was equipped with solar systems giving an energy output of 4 - 5 GWp. Although this area is only 1 % of the entire worldwide glass production, it is the only rapidly growing sector in glass business. Therefore all glass makers put their focus on the production of highly transparent low-iron solar glass.

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The Authors

Dr. Thomas Hofmann Head of R&D Centrosolar Glas GmbH & Co. KG 1993 Ph.D. in Chemistry at University Erlangen Nuernberg 1994 - 1999 Siemens AG, Section manager Material Technology 1999 - 2006 Pilkington/Flabeg/Centrosolarglas, Head of R&D Department New Product... Read more