Solar Sinter

Yesterday I saw Solar Sinter at the Designs of the Year show at the Design Museum. The film explains it all and is nicely shot. Pretty incredible, wish I was allowed to touch the bowl in the museum!

film: https://vimeo.com/25401444
more info: http://www.markuskayser.com/work/solarsinter/

William Grylls Adams discovered that when light was shined upon selenium, the material shed electrons, thereby creating electricity.

My flat

It occurred to me at this point in the project that my flat receives almost no solar energy. The photograph above is the most sky that can be seen from any of the windows i.e. the only source of light energy. Only when the sun is at about 203 degrees SSW will it shine through for a few minutes (depending on cloud cover).

Continuing with the general idea of transfer, I went back to researching solar power plants. I looked again at how Concentrated Solar Power technologies use mirrors to reflect and concentrate sunlight onto receivers. These receivers collect the solar energy and convert it to high temperature liquid, steam or gas i.e. thermal energy which is then converted to electrical energy.

The photo above is the Andasol 1 solar thermal power plant filled with parabolic trough collectors. Heated to approximately 400°C by the concentrated sun’s rays, the synthetic thermal oil is then pumped through a series of heat exchangers to produce steam. The steam is converted to electrical energy in a conventional steam turbine generator.

The use of mirrors is something to think about further. Living in a flat with only one window receiving  sunlight for a few minutes a day, this could be an area I'm going to look into further to see if that tiny bit of solar energy can be used.

SolarHouse

This is a design for a game called SolarHouse. It's pretty much the same idea as SolarFarm from earlier but instead you have to allow as much solar energy to reach your solar panels as opposed to the grass. Every 5 levels, an appliance will be added to the house such as a light, shower or microwave. The elements such as the bombs are purely for the sake of the game to show how sensitive the panels are. In this case, you can repair them three times i.e. three bombs, but after that it's game over. All the aesthetics are rough, it's mainly the idea I was trying to show.

An ongoing thought throughout this project is why anyone would want to watch or interact with anything digital. What makes energy interesting? What makes solar energy interesting? The reason for the game is to generate awareness to a wide audience about how much energy they use. The idea that the more they use, the more energy is being consumed and if the power is not provided by a clean energy, like solar, where is it coming from. The intention is not to make a 'Green' game, because of course just using the app to play the game uses energy and there are the term is overused by brands selling themselves as 'eco'. A question I was asked when I presented this to the class is when would be use it? Anywhere by any one, as anyone would play a game; on the way to work, during a break etc.

Perigee

I saved these images last week when the moon came closer to the earth than usual. Known as the 'supermoon' appears up to 14% bigger and 30% brighter than when it is furthest from the planet. I thought it coincides nicely with this project how we're seeing this beautiful planet thanks to the light from the sun illuminating it. The reflected sunlight from the moon takes about 1.278 seconds to travel to the earth. The distance is about 384,000 kilometers at nearly 300,000 km/sec.

Images from BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17973367

SolarFarm

Last week we were asked to design an app/website/interactive PDF. Something digital a user could interact with basically. This was the first app I designed which I briefly explained in the previous entry. It's called SolarFarm because the idea is you pay for the game, say £5. There would be 50 levels and when you pass each level, 10p is sent to a solar charity. I made a 20 second animation in After Effects demonstrating how it works on an ipad.

The game lasts for a minute (sped up real time) in which time you are to look after the farmer's field by allowing as much solar energy to reach the crops as possible. This involves moving clouds out the way including pollution clouds (purple) which produce acid rain and destroy the grass where it lands. The yellow circles are sort of a 'solar booster' and you've to catch them to make the grass grow faster.

I made a website for the app too (homepage below). This is where you can find a link to Solar Aid, the charity, the app store and a link to another page where the demo video plays.The name could instead be called SolarGrow.