Imagine a world where virtually any surface could generate solar power. Your office could be fully sustainable, your smart home could generate electricity to take pressure from the grid and reduce your energy cost, your smartphone wouldn’t run out of power in the middle of the day. This is what founders Miles Barr, Richard Lunt, and Vladimir Bulovic had in mind when they were doing research at MIT. They imagined a world where our carbon footprint could be rapidly reduced by surfaces all around them. “We had a vision for new ways of deploying solar through technology solutions that seamlessly embed solar into everyday products and surfaces,” says Miles Barr, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Ubiquitous Energy.
In 2011 Barr, Lunt and Bulovic were at MIT collaborating on next generation solar technologies based on various new materials innovations. After having quite a few successes they decided to start a company to commercialize this technology and bring it to the masses. After enrolling in courses at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Barr met Bart Howe who then joined the team to help bring their vision into reality. Bart Howe, co-founder of Ubiquitous Energy, remembers the hustle of the beginning and flying out to Palo Alto for investment pitches all over Sand Hill Road.
The focus turned into where to first apply the technology. Windows. With over 20 billion square feet of glass is installed every year, the team saw this as the perfect place to start.
The broad use of UE Power™ alone could offset 10% of global CO2 emissions by piggybacking on windows that would be installed anyways over the next 30 years. Vladimir Bulovic, MIT Professor, Director of MIT.nano and co-founder of Ubiquitous Energy said, “Transformative, revolutionary technology advancement takes at least a decade to grow from an idea to impact. In the last decade UE has brought the world the transformative advancement of truly transparent PVs.”
