Santa Fe-based glaser Capital City Glass is installing a UbiQD solar window at the Holiday Inn Express and Suites in Los Alamos, N.M. Image rights: UbiQD, Inc.
UbiQD Inc., a New Mexico-based advanced materials company, has installed its power generating windows on three commercial construction sites. Buildings now equipped with quantum dot tinted glass luminescent solar concentrator technology include a Holiday Inn Express hotel, UbiQD's Los Alamos, NM headquarters, and a US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) joint venture -Energy Department. in Golden, Colorado.
These building pilots represent the first real world tests for UbiQD and some of the earliest and largest known luminescent concentrator window installations in the world. The tests aim to validate the importance of parameters such as window orientation, time of day, seasonality, temperature as well as manufacturing and installation methods.
The double pane insulating glass units can be built into most existing frame structures and were manufactured with the assistance of local window manufacturer GlazTech Industries in Albuquerque, N.M.
In late 2018, UbiQD received a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) that provided $ 750,000 in funding over a two-year period. In 2020 and 2021, the NSF awarded UbiQD grants totaling $ 660,000 for UbiQD's continuous window development and pilot projects. The company's solar window program was also sponsored by NMEDD, U.S. DOE and Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator supported IN2 Program, and in late 2020 the company announced the completion of $ 7 million venture funding.
"My partners and I are excited to be at the forefront of energy technology and building-integrated sustainability, and frankly we were fortunate enough to have the opportunity," said Brian Patrick Martin, co-owner of the Holiday Inn Express and Suites Los Alamos. "The window upgrade was part of our recent $ 2.4 million Formula Blue renovation, and I know our guests will enjoy the solar-powered pancakes for breakfast."
UbiQD intends to accelerate the adoption of its quantum dot window technology in 2022. Further window projects are planned in New Mexico, Colorado and Washington State.