Giant Marble Harvests Energy From Sun And Moon
It looks like a giant, glass marble. But this globe is no game. It’s a sun-tracking, solar energy concentrator created by Barcelona-based architects Rawlemon and, according to the designers, is able to collect not just sunlight but moonlight as well. The weatherproof sphere is designed to rotate and follow the sun across the sky. It’s so sensitive to light that at night, it can even harvest moonlight and convert it into electricity.
Andre Rawlemon, the architect and designer, says his spherical, sun-tracking glass globe is able to concentrate sunlight and moonlight up to 10,000 times and that the system is 35 percent more efficient than photovoltaic designs that track the sun. One of Rawlemon’s idea is to build these globes into the exterior walls of buildings and use them to generate electricity.
Other products to invest in when this technology reaches full commercialization potential: Bounty and Windex.
Seriously though, the ability alone to convert moonlight to electricity could be a game changer for the manufacturers of photovoltaic cells where typical solar panels offer a range of 8 to 12 hours of usable daylight for the generation of electricity.
Coupled with products that offer greater efficiency and other simple behavioral aspects like turning off computers and monitors (or at least put in stand-by) when they’re not being used could add up to significant savings and longer-term environmental benefits.