First assignment of group n° 028
Resources used by the team[modifier | modifier le wikicode]
First description of our project[modifier | modifier le wikicode]
Innovative daily solutions for creating green electricity
1. What Problem do you want to solve ?
Solar power hasn't quite been to our lifestyle yet. It is quite a shame because it represents a renewable energy on an infinite level (at least until the sun exists). The solutions brought thanks to kind of energy are tremendous. The first and obvious one is that it could help reduce the global warming due to pollution produced by the human activity .
Indeed, the human activity is today overloading our athmosphere with carbone emissions, which slowly drive up our planet’s temperature and create significate impact on our environment and of course our health.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that about 11% of world marketed energy consumption is from renewable energy sources (biofuels, biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar, and wind) with a projection for 15% by 2040.
Electricity production accounts for more than one third of worldwide global warming emissions (mainly caused by the production of coal to produce electricity). On the countrary, renewable energy such as solar power produce almost zero warming emissions. In addition, according to climatologists and most scientists, life cycle global warming emissions associated with renewable energy – including the manufacturing, installation, operation and maintenance are also close to zero.
Therefore, the increase of supply of renewable energy is more than necessary in our actual environment and would surely allow us to replace actual carbon intensive energy sources such as coal, gas or oil.
Moreover, it is essential to take into account an other advantage of renewable energy, which offer significant public health benefits. The air and water pollution emitted by coal and natural gas plants is today proved to be linked with several diseases such as breathing problems, heart attacks and cancers. Therefore it is not only the global warming effects on our planet which are at stake, but the consequences on our health.
Consequently, we consider it essential, as young students and for the next generations to start acting now.
2. Why does this problem exist?
If today we have such an evironmenet problem it is especially because as explain above we do not care enough about the substainability of our environment. And even if the rules are changing we still need to change ours behavior in order to have a better life for us but also for our childrens.
If this problem exist today it is also mainly because solar panels did not work well during the last decades especially in the differents cities around the globe.Many people had decided to invest money on solar panels in France but it has been a really unsuccesfull business. We also need point out that investment in the substainability has increased, but it is still not enough if we really want to change something we need more project and also more investment in such field.
Finally the fact that nuclear and fossil energy are much more efficient than clean energy just pushed us to prove that we could do something about it and find a solution to make electricty from everywhere pn earth. And if there is one thing you will be able to find anywhere it is windows.
3. What breakthrough are you commited to creating?
We would like to find the way to increase the use of solar energy in order to reduce dirty energy in private and professional consumption.
Solar panels turn energy from the sun’s rays directly into useful energy that can be used to aliments homes and businesses.
As the main problem of solar energy is the need of big surface of panels, our idea is to design a window which contains transparent solar electric panels, in order to stock clean energy and reduce the consumption of traditional, dirty energy.
The “Magic Window” will be a complement system of solar panel.
Our project is small, but can have a significant impact. Why ? Because every people, every family, every home around the world has the possibility to use the system that we propose, and start to produce electricity in an «eco friendly» way .
Of course, today many solutions are proposed to produce your own electricity at home, such as traditional solar panel, but the problem with such concepts is that you have to own the building in order to have access to a solar panel.
On the contrary, every person, even the one who are living in flats, can have access to this concept. That is why we have in mind this project – We think it could be a tremendous step toward the decrease of dependancy of fossile energies for future generation and to give them, thanks to our Magic Window a breath of fresh solar energy. (slogan)
Potential experts already identified
-Bertrand PICCARD: CEO and co-founder of Solar Impulse
-Dr. Scott R. HAMMOND: principal scientist of Solar Window
