I love this quote from MIT mechanical engineer Alexander Mitsos “”It is very scary that we did all the [numerical optimization] work and then we go back to nature,” he noted. “We could have started there.”
What is he talking about? Designing solar power arrays based on the sunflower. It sounds simple when you think about it. We call it the sunflower partly because it follows the sun. Is it any surprise that it’s optimized to catch the sun’s rays?
Regardless of the simplicity of the design, reducing the size of solar power arrays by 20% is huge. Go nature.
Tags: MIT, solar energy, solar power arrays, sunflower