Vacuum insulating glass price & costs

In people’s impression,vacuum insulating glass price is always quite high,which is always 5-10 times that of normal insulating glass,when developers and house owners paid high price and expect the excellent living environment and energy ever best energy efficient effect, the unstable VIG quality becomes another worry,glass always self explosion, edge sealing failed ,which is not equivalent to the high price,that’s the reason why vacuum insulating glass promotion is difficult in past decades.

In the market,vacuum insulating glass price are always USD150-250/SQM, even though there’s some subsidy or tax credit policies that can help decrease overall costs,but it’s still higher than expected,this is related to the VIG costs.

Factors affect vacuum insulating glass price:

1. The investment &development costs.

Since VIG was invented in 1993,more and more factories invested millions dollars to produce VIG and make it perfect for larger application.

VIG production equipment: As there’s no standard production equipment for VIG production,each VIG manufacturers have to research and develop their own production facilities. The core is how to seal the glass edge and keep the high vacuum degree,there’re many many factors to consider,for example, how to keep uniform vacuum degree, how to prevent glass breakage during production,how to combine the glass together,how to keep the glass long lifetime, all these problem need to be tested year by year and been solved through endless huge investment.

Synergy VIG production line, images comes from Synergy.

To keep the VIG been applied in more categories,more problem need to be solved, how to make tempered vacuum glass,how to make large panel VIG,how to keep long lifetime,how to control the micro support pillars and decrease its visibility….

The investment in researching new production equipment,and test, try new production methods and technology,all these becomes the biggest costs of VIG.

VIG production lines of Zhongtengzhiyuan

2. 
   

   Glass panels.

Same as insulated glass, VIG consist of high efficiency low-E coated glass and another monolithic glass,glass cutting,edge works,tempering process make it the 2^nd part of VIG overall costs.

3. 
   

   Finished glass ratio.

Different from other processed glass products which has over 95% finished ratio,VIG finished ratio is relatively low,usually 80-90%, the duplicated repair and production will increase glass costs.

4. 
   

   Glass production efficiency.

Typical production time for each VIG varies from 20 minutes to 30 minutes,this is decided by the production technology different manufacturers adopted.

• One stop production: The edge sealing process is finished in high vacuum degree environment.
• Two step production: Glass will be sealed,and then evacuate the air inside glass through evacuation holes.

Of course the less production procedures,the higher production efficiency.The evacuation holes also increased the glass spontaneous breakage ratio as the compression around the holes is higher,the holes also bring difficulty when handling glass, it affect the overall glass appearance as well.

Unlucky ,most VIG manufacturers can only realize 100sqm daily output.

Function of evacuation holes is to evauation the air inside VIG-PIC copyrihgt Panasonic.

Compared with standard IGU production,each factories sealing& vacuum technology also different even if they adopt the same materials.

5. 
   

   Glass combination.

Glass combination also affect the final costs, the thinner glass,the more difficulty to control glass flatness during tempering process, which also affect glass final finished ratio.

Some customers prefer vacuum laminated glass.Different from normal laminated glass,Vacuum laminated glass must laminate the vacuum glass and monolithic panels,because of the low thermal conductivity of VIG panels,it’s quite difficult to heat the PVB interlayer and achieve the temperature required to laminate glass together.

laminated vacuum glass-produced by HaanGlas,we’re able to make vacuum glass into vacuum laminated glass through special technics

How HaanGlas VIG is produced:

After several years research,HaanGlas vacuum glass production is becoming much faster and easier,which helps our VIG production costs&price decreased much and more friendly for large scale application.Typical production procedure is :

Glass cutting  → edge work → silk screen board → tempering → placing sealing solders →placing micro support pillars →vacuum process& edge sealing →activate gas absorbent →test&quality inspection→ packing.

• High production efficiency: One stop production enable daily output of each line reach 300sqm/.
• High finished glass ratio: Uniform vacuum degree enable >90% finished glass ratio.
• Mature production technology.

MGM vacuum glass line helps our vacuum insulating glass price decrease much

The disadvantage is,the glass is suitable for mass production with uniform size.If glass panels has many size variations,it’s hard to control the costs as we need to produce silk screen plates that to help better combination of glass and solders.

Even though the vacuum glass price is still 3 times that of triple glass units,and in the long term ,the price will also 3-5 times that of normal 6-12-6 insulated glass panels, but considering that VIG thermal perfromance is only 25% of IGU and will continuously save costs and create comfortable living environment in the 25 years lifetime,it deserve to replace your current windows with VIG.

We are keep developing new edge sealing materials and sealing technology to further increase the production efficiency and decrease costs again, HaanGlas strive to enlarge the application of vacuum glass with lower price and more mature vacuum glass products.