Posted by Jamie in Green Articles, Green Products & Services | 0 Comments
$2 a day for solar power
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Recent graduates Capra J’neva and Emilie Fetscher of Stanford University’s product and design program came up with a smart idea on how to make the cost of a solar panel affordable.
Veranda Solar, as the name suggests, is a panel designed to be handy and easy-to-use.
Both founders conceptualized the environment-friendly device to be beautiful, flower-shaped solar panels as part of their master’s project in school.
They are planning to sell it for $600 each in the latter part of 2009. It can be cheaper, though, if funding increases.
The Veranda Solar has panels that snap together so that consumers can buy just one for a start and then add more later on if they find it effective. It functions as a converter of DC electricity from the panels to alternate current (AC) electricity that some people may use in the electric grid that plugs right into a wall socket.
However, the major issue with solar panels is their expensive cost. For a residential roof attached with solar panels, total expenses could reach more than $30,000.
SunPower helped Veranda come up with the prototype panels. SunPower’s solar cells are among the best and most efficient in the industry.
Veranda’s panels will cost just like the panels of other competitors on an installed dollar per watt basis. Its next goal is to fund more money so that it can start the production of more panels. They are planning to have $1.5 million. Capra J’neva was able to hire a few employees in her company after winning a $124,000 prize in September in a European pro-green design competition titled Picnic Green.
The 37-year-old graduate has a degree in photography and used to work in a multimedia design in Oregon. Later on, she studied environmental design composting port-a-potties for use in woodland. In early 2001, she was able to organize a program in San Francisco to educate people in converting diesel car engines, enabling them to utilize vegetable oil biodiesel.
With an environmentalist heart she said, “I went in there to tackle the world’s problems: energy, water and transportation,”
If she could get funds, Capra J’neva plans on working with utilities in order to sell panels via the clean energy option where buyers pay more to get clean power.
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