A small solar innovator has big ideas about how to generate electricity by covering windows around the world with a thin film of spray-on solar cells.

New Energy Technologies announced last week that it has partnered with the National Renewable Energy Research Laboratory in Golden, Colo., to test and tweak its SolarWindow technology and ready it for market.

"The addition of NREL's world-class solar research group to our ongoing efforts at the University of South Florida marks a significant step forward for our company and our SolarWindow technology," John Conklin, New Energy Technologies president and CEO wrote in an e-mail.

Partnering with NREL allows the company to move more quickly toward commercializing its SolarWindow. Conklin said he expects 2011 and 2012 to be big years for moving the product toward the market.

The company was able to scale its new technology up dramatically in February when it announced that it had successfully turned a one-foot by one-foot panel of glass into a solar panel using its spray-on technology.

The company released a 4-inch by 4-inch prototype in 2010

“You would think that going from the prototype to a 12 by 12 version would be a simple up-scaling,” Conklin said in February. “But it's orders of magnitude—more complicated.”

With that triumph blowing at New Energy Technologies’ back, the company is now looking to improve cell efficiency and performance, increase transparency of glass surfaces, enhance durability, ensure long-term product performance, scale-up current working prototypes, and develop low-cost manufacturing methods, Conklin wrote in an e-mail.

That’s why New Energy partnered with NREL for expert and highly-specialized testing.

New Energy Technologies, however, is not the only company working on developing a successful solar window. Pythagoras Solar announced a month ago that it has installed its solar window technology in a small section of the Willis Tower, formerly the Sears Tower, in Chicago. The tower owners say that if the technology proves successful, they will expand the project to cover a larger surface area of the building.

Conklin did not elaborate on the differences between the technologies, but said that New Energy is using a different technology to build solar windows than Pythagoras is.

Udi Paret, spokesman for Pythagoras, explained that the solar windows they’ve installed in Chicago are double-paned with solar cells built in between the window panes. New Energy is developing a spray on liquid solar that coats glass surfaces and transforms them into energy-producing solar panels.