Water-Filled Glass Orbs Might Be The Next Step in Solar Power...Designers/Engineers, notably in Spain, have been playing around with smaller-scale Concentrating Solar Power (CSP)...think of a "magnifying glass" heating up the sun's energy to produce power. A real challenge for "futurists", in this field of development, would seem to be the maintainable mechanics of controlling the beam of sunlight, cooling systems, energy storage, weight, fragility, expense of the concentrating materials...

Can anyone out in TB ForumLand imagine future walls at JAKES 2.0 filled with "bottles" functioning as concentrating solar collectors?
A prototype of multiple ball lens, designed by Rawlemon, faintly resembles the iconic glass windows of timeless palazzos in Venice, Italy.

Solar power isn’t a new concept in alternative energy-in fact, it may be one of the oldest. But for Barcelona-based design firm Rawlemon, architecting a new way to harness that energy led to the creation of what it calls the beta.torics System.

According to InHabitat, this system is a departure from the flat photovoltaic panels that have become ubiquitous in all products that harness the sun’s rays. Instead, beta.torics is a water-filled glass ball which concentrates solar rays by 10,000 times, forming them into a beam of energy.

DesignBoom reports that architect André Broessel is the creator of the spherical system of solar energy generation. The glass sphere can be mounted on inclined surfaces, or on "curtain walls"-building facades that don't carry the weight of the roof-in order to empower the building's surface. Aside from the spheres' striking aesthetics, Rawlemon claims the specific geometrical structure of its beta.torics system makes it 35 percent more efficient than traditional solar panels. The fully rotational weatherproof ball can even harvest electricity from moonlight.
-Andri Antoniades (TakePart)

designboom Link:
www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/16/view/23214/spherical-glass-solar-energy-generat or-by-rawlemon.html


World's Most Efficient Polymer-Based Organic Solar Cell
Polymer-based solar cells are transparent, lightweight and flexible – and the technology is thought to open up several new creative applications for solar power, including integrating flexible solar films in vehicles, transparent solar cell windows, and even solar-powered clothing.

http://inhabitat.com/phillips-66-and-solarmer-develop-worlds-most-efficient-poly mer-based-organic-solar-cell

AFRICA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)-based Nonprofit Company Fostering a Hybrid System to Provide Heat, Electricity, and Hot Water For African Communities

The Solar ORC replaces solar electric panels and diesel engines for electricity and adds the very useful benefit of plentiful hot water and even space heating. The extra heat could also run an absorption chiller for air conditioning. While it is cheaper and less complex to install discrete technologies to provide electricity or hot water, the team hopes that cost of their system will be much lower in the long term.
The first installation is at a health clinic in the Berea District of Lesotho, where temperatures can get near freezing, making space heating a valuable asset. The system will provide 18-24kW-hr of energy and 200-300 gallons of hot water daily.

The technology is proven to be effective, but its complexity leave a huge question mark about its long-term reliability. Products like Magic Boxes (which combine all of a home’s HVAC and hot water) have proven to be expensive and sometimes unreliable – if one component breaks the entire system stops working.
And architects and engineers in Africa have learned that designing low maintenance buildings and systems in isolated regions is the best long-term approach. If the Solar ORC is to be viable it will need to be proven to be robust as well as advanced.


PHOTO Link:
http://inhabitat.com/mits-all-in-one-solar-orc-to-provide-heat-electricity-and-h ot-water-for-african-communities

Heliostats are clunky and maybe inefficient Z, they however could be manufactured by a good all purpose workshop. As solar is becoming more affordable, such a project would more be a learning experience and a pleasure at seeing metal, glass and good work light up a room at night. Still need batteries to store the output.

A good site:

http://www.redrok.com/main.htm

turey...statically directed flat solar panels have, from the get-go, been seen as the bane to efficiency in the solar collector system. Yet mechanical devices, such as sun-tracking heliostats, were troubled with the real possibility of maintenance headaches & break-downs.
Innovation ("building a better mousetrap") seems to be energized in a digital age, when so much info can be gathered, shared, evaluated, engineered and put to effective use in product delivery.

So how to solve the efficiency upgrade in solar cells, while minimizing the mechanical/maintenance issues?
Here's what the V3 Solar & Nectar Design Team are introducing for market consideration...Who will reap the benefits of extreme testing & competitive pricing...China???


If there’s one constant among the vast majority of solar panel designs, it’s flatness; while solar panels can be equipped to tilt to follow the sun’s path through the course of the day, there are still significant efficiency limitations to this basic design. V3Solar’s rather elegant photovoltaic Spin Cell cones aim to address that, and their current prototype was recently third-party verified as capable of generating “over 20 times more electricity than a static flat panel with the same area of photovoltaic cells.”

VIDEO: Spinning Cone-Shaped Solar Cells Generate 20 Times More Electricity Than Flat Photovoltaics
http://inhabitat.com/v3solars-photovoltaic-spin-cell-cones-capture-sunlight-all- day-long


As long as the world is turning and spinning, we're gonna be dizzy and we're gonna make mistakes.
--Mel Brooks

Nice. Could also function as a windmill with some tweaking. Solar and breeze collection same time.

Are they in production and have a price?

Very cool. Hope this technology pans out.

But speaking of cool...The video says the spinning keeps the thing cool, just like a summer breeze across the skin (@40 seconds).

However:
"The reason why fans make you feel cool is due to something called the wind-chill effect. Blowing air over your skin causes quicker evaporation of sweat which allows your heat energy to escape much quicker than normal, making you feel cooler. "
(http://www.howitworksdaily.com/science/how-do-fans-make-you-feel-cooler/)

So unless they go this thing to sweat, I'm not sure that's an accurate claim.
Thoughts?