Stirling Sunflowers : Solar Electric Things

If you go to any high place on the planet that isn’t a desert of some sort, and look out at the view, chances are you’ll see a lot of green… still. As far as the eye can see, it will be mostly green.

That green is a million billion illion willion squillion leaves, and each one is almost certainly a little flat thing that’s been specially evolved and angled to aim at the sun, and quite a lot of them follow the sun across the sky. This is not an accident, and it’s not Mother Nature trying to tell us something… although…

This turned up on the TED rss a couple of days ago:

It’s Bill Gross going on about a couple of things for which I have a tangential fascination – genetic algorithms and Stirling Engines … and solar energy obviously. Everyone loves solar energy. Except amature nuke shill morons who are probably suffering from some sort of authority-worship/obedience complex. I blame the parents.

Unfortunately it’s from 2003, and the only things I can find that point to which direction this thing went in, are boring looking arrays of mirrors and fresnel lenses… though I daresay they’re still better than I could do. They’ve gone for the money. They’ve gone for centralisation.

Still, if it works…

I do like the initial design though – and the philosophy… something decentralised and cheap enough for anyone.

Other than that of course… this thing just looks… right.

It is it’s own built in marketing. Sometimes something just looks so cool, you’ve got to get one whether it works 100% or not.