WOW! —– SUN-TRACKING DEVICE

A team of three MIT students have designed a system that will allow solar power panels to track the sun without motors or control systems.The student team, called Heliotrope, won top honors and a check for $10,000 in the finals of a competition aimed at developing innovative energy technologies.

They designed the system to imitate the way plants track the sun across the sky, by using the difference in temperature between shaded and sunny areas to change the properties of the material supporting solar photovoltaic cells. The system, once built, is completely passive, requiring no power source or electronics to control the movement. Solar cells that track the angle of the sun can be 38 percent more efficient at generating power than those that are mounted in a fixed position. (more…)