Pilkington: Bright future for Solar E

The product improvement has included a change in the chemistry used to produce the coating.The coating, developed by Dr Michael Remington, senior scientist in the R&D on-line coatings technology group, allows for better solar selectivity - in other words, it's very clear to see through but less solar heat can pass through it.The new coating technology also creates a more uniform flow and enables production to go on longer before cleaning.

The manufacturing process improvement included installation of newly designed coaters on the float glass line in Ottawa.

"Customers liked Pilkington Solar E, but we knew that improvements needed to be done to the cosmetics of the product and the peformance of the production process," said Dr. Michael Soubeyrand, group head of on-line coating technology. "The original coaters at Ottawa were 14 years old, so the installation of new, next generation coaters gave us the opportunity to improve our processes. The feedback from customers so far has been very positive."