Our focus with this project went immediately to the use of the solar panels for gathering energy, as well it should. In the natural world the sensing of the location of the sun was used for maximum energy harvesting or for avoiding the sun, we went with the former.
We imagined eyes and then focused in on the funcion of eyes. Additionally Melany had seen an article on the stalk plant on the Ask Nature site which concentrates light for increased energy absorbtion through a clear dome and directs it down a stalk.
Spherical lenses will be placed on the top of a building allowing us to concentrate light incedent on the sphere to the center. In the center there will be an expensive solar cell (multilayer) which could not be deployed over a surface area the size of the sphere due to cost per unit area of solar cell. The concentrator we propose would allow for highly efficient capture of solar energy impacting a large surface area of the earth without buying a large amount of expensive high end photovoltaics.
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