Electronically Tintable Glass: The Future of High Performance Facades is Here

We live in a dynamic environment, but until now our building envelopes have been static in nature – unable to effectively control the flow of the sun’s light and heat into buildings from hour to hour and from season to season. Electronically tintable glass provides the means to develop a dynamic façade with variable visible light transmission and solar heat gain coefficient, which saves cooling and lighting energy, and solves problems of excessive solar heat gain, glare, fading and the need for unsightly blinds. In fact, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) states that their goal of a zero energy building in 2030 cannot be achieved without the use of dynamic glazing. Electronically tintable glass is now commercially available and is being actively specified and installed in building envelopes. This paper will briefly review dynamic electrochromic glass performance characteristics, and will then focus on a number of diverse case studies to demonstrate the application of electrochromic glass in different building types and glazing applications to achieve different objectives such as glare control, heat control and occupant comfort. Integration and automation of control will also be discussed.