When Avatar came out, James Cameron boasted that it would be the first solar-powered movie franchise in history. Now the director, deep-sea explorer, NASA advisor, and all around badass has turned his attention to designing cinematic-quality solar panels for the rest of us.
Cameron himself was an early adopter of solar tech: Besides switching to solar energy on his film sets, he has a 50-kilowatt array on his own Santa Barbara County property. But even he acknowledges the problems with solar panels, and one of the major hurdles keeping them from widespread adoption: They’re just kinda ugly.
The design began with a sketch by Cameron which was visualized by a CG modeler from Avatar, then realized by a structural engineer and fabricator. The 33-foot-tall “flowers” feature clusters of panels which are individually welded and bolted together; each 28.5-foot-wide flower includes five central panels surrounded by 14 “petals.” Cameron then worked with the solar company Sonnen on the tracking technology, which uses astronomic data to calculate the sun’s position and align the panels accordingly throughout the day.
The first Sun Flowers were installed last month on the Malibu campus of the MUSE School, a nonprofit school focused on environmental learning which was cofounded by his wife Suzy Amis Cameron (Cameron actually presented the concept to her as a birthday present in 2012).
The grid-tied system is currently generating about 260 kWh per day, which provides about 75 to 90 percent of the school’s power needs, but Cameron believes in the upcoming summer months the panels could supply the full 100 percent. (He’s looking forward to testing Tesla’s forthcoming Powerwall batteries for storage options, too.) Cameron’s team also developed a dashboard tool that allows students to monitor energy generation in the classroom, with teachers designing lesson plans around the science of solar collection.
http://gizmodo.com/james-cameron-s-plan-to-fix-solar-panels-1714720243
Post time: Jun-16-2017