MIT Solar Findings Mirror Those of 13 Year Old’s Tree Research

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation 1 Comment

A recent report from MIT, replete with computer algorithms and graduate level insights, made your editor dip back into a story about a young naturalist who saw a model in nature that could lead to more efficient solar arrays.  Both produced works of genius and give us hope for some real breakthroughs in solar power deployment. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced that, “Innovative 3-D designs from an MIT team can more than double the solar power generated from a given area,” and suggested that models of their new approach, “show power output ranging from double to more than 20 times that of fixed flat panels with the same base area.” Jeffrey Grossman, the Carl Richard Soderberg Career Development Associate Professor of Power Engineering at MIT and leader of the research team, reports in a paper published in the journal Energy and Environmental Science that the greatest improvements came in “locations far from the equator, in winter months and on cloudier …