Tag Archives: solar power

These Solar Gazebos Have 4 Wind Turbines and Let You Charge Below

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University campuses function like small cities. Students move between buildings, find outdoor spots to read or work, and constantly need power for phones and laptops. Sustainability tends to get communicated through plaques, rooftop panels, and annual reports, things you don’t interact with. There’s a gap between “this campus is reducing its carbon footprint” and “here’s a place where you can sit, charge your phone, and actually experience that in some tangible way.”

Michael Jantzen’s Solar Wind Gazebos are public pavilions designed to close that gap. Intended for university campuses, they function as gathering spaces while generating electricity from sun and wind, with the power feeding into the university’s grid. The proposal treats renewable infrastructure as a place to inhabit rather than a system to install, and it makes that infrastructure legible to anyone who walks up to one.

Designer: Michael Jantzen

The roof does most of the communicating. Four commercially available vertical-axis wind turbines sit at the corners, while a large circular solar panel occupies the center. That layout is easy to read at a glance: wind at the perimeter, sun at the core. You don’t need a label to understand what’s happening because the structure’s own geometry explains its energy logic, which is something most utility infrastructure completely fails to do.

The frame is predominantly stainless steel on concrete bases, which is a deliberate choice for outdoor public installations. Campuses need structures that handle weather, seasonal temperature swings, and constant use without requiring frequent maintenance windows. Stainless steel and concrete aren’t glamorous materials, but they’re honest ones for a building type that needs to outlast a decade of students without becoming an eyesore or a liability.

Inside, four cylindrical seating spaces are attached to the support columns, each with a receptacle at the top for plugging in devices. That detail is quiet but important, turning charging into a normal part of sitting down outdoors rather than a task that sends students hunting for an outlet inside a building. A large round central platform offers a shared surface for sitting or lying down, creating a mix of semi-private individual zones and an open communal gathering area.

A circular electric light mounted above the central platform runs off the same solar and wind generation, extending the pavilion’s usefulness into evening hours. The structure essentially powers its own ambience, which gives the whole thing a satisfying sense of completion, generation, use, and light running off the same rooftop.

The gazebos are designed to be reproduced as prefabricated structures in various sizes and installed across different landscapes. The same concept fits public parks, corporate campuses, and any open space where people gather and need shade, seating, and somewhere to plug in. The broader implication is that renewable energy infrastructure doesn’t always have to hide behind fences or sit on rooftops. Sometimes it can be the very thing you sit inside of on a Tuesday afternoon between classes.

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Lie Under This Solar Roof and Watch the Sun Move in Real-Time

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Most solar infrastructure is treated as background hardware, panels on roofs or fields that quietly feed the grid while public life happens somewhere else. That separation makes renewable energy feel abstract, a number on a bill rather than an experience. The Solar Eclipse Pavilion imagines a different approach, where the act of harvesting sunlight becomes the centerpiece of a place where people actually gather, making energy visible and social at the same time.

The Solar Eclipse Pavilion is a large steel public art structure that doubles as a small power plant. A 7,000 square foot photovoltaic array forms its roof, converting energy from the sun into electricity for the surrounding community. Some of that power goes straight into the local grid, while some is reserved to run a low-energy LED display mounted on the underside of the canopy, turning the ceiling into a kind of artificial sun overhead.

Designer: Michael Jantzen

The LED surface does not just loop a stock animation. Sensors embedded in the solar array continuously record variations in light and heat across the surface, and those fluctuations drive the graphics and sound. The ceiling shows graphic color images of the sun that morph in response to clouds, temperature shifts, and the angle of light, while an electronic soundscape shifts along with them, making the invisible behavior of the sun legible as color and tone.

After sunset, the photovoltaic cells stop generating power, but the pavilion does not go dark. Pre-recorded images and sound, captured from earlier solar activity, play back through the night until the sun rises and takes over the controls again. For special public events, the default sun imagery and audio can be swapped out for other content, turning the LED ceiling into a programmable media surface for performances, data visualizations, or civic messages.

The solar array shades a large plaza beneath, with built-in seating that invites people to sit, talk, or lie back and watch the ceiling. The pavilion becomes a place for markets, concerts, or informal hangouts, with the energy infrastructure quietly doing its work overhead. Instead of separating technical function from social function, the project fuses them, so the same structure that generates electricity also generates shade, spectacle, and a reason to linger.

The designer describes the pavilion as a gigantic computer chip, a surface where information and energy are manipulated to do work for the people who use it. In that reading, the photovoltaic modules are like transistors, the LED ceiling is like a display bus, and the plaza is the user interface. It is a speculative project, but it points toward a future where renewable energy systems are not hidden away, but turned into civic landmarks that make the sun’s power feel tangible, shared, and even a little theatrical.

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Michael Jantzen Just Turned Solar into a 16-Arm Moving Sculpture

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Most renewable energy systems hide in plain sight. Rooftop solar panels blend into shingles, batteries sit in containers behind fences, and wind turbines spin in distant fields. They quietly do their jobs without helping anyone understand what happens inside them, which feels like a missed opportunity when you are trying to build support for systems that might keep the planet livable for another generation or two.

Michael Jantzen’s Solar and Gravity Powered Art and Science Pavilion treats that visibility problem as a design challenge. The conceptual structure combines a public exhibition space under an umbrella-shaped roof with a tall central tower supporting 16 long, weighted steel arms. Those arms lift and lower throughout the day, creating shifting silhouettes while demonstrating how solar power and gravity work together as a functional energy system rather than just theoretical concepts.

Designer: Michael Jantzen

The cycle works simply enough. A solar cell array at the top powers 16 winches that pull the weighted arms upward, storing potential energy. When the pavilion needs electricity, or when someone wants to change its shape, the arms fall back down under gravity. Their descent drives 16 generators that feed power to the building or local grid, turning stored height into usable electricity without batteries or other complex systems getting in the way.

Arriving on a sunny afternoon, you would see the arms at different angles around the tower, sometimes clustered vertically, sometimes fanned out like a mechanical flower. The shifting positions are not just decorative but are the visible result of energy being stored and released. You can read the building’s energy state in its skyline without needing a diagram, which turns out to be a surprisingly rare thing for infrastructure to offer at any scale.

Inside, the umbrella roof shelters a large floor for exhibitions, lectures, or performances. At the center, 16 cables drop through holes in the floor, each marked with an orange spot matching the orange-tipped arms outside. Those cables connect to winches and generators below, making the mechanical core part of the exhibition rather than something hidden. Visitors can track which arms are up or down by watching cables move, turning passive observation into something closer to active participation.

Of course, the setup means the building becomes a working model while hosting events about climate or technology. People walk through exhibitions while the structure demonstrates solar capture and gravity storage without needing to explain every detail. The pavilion functions as a tourist attraction, classroom, and public art that teaches through motion instead of asking you to absorb paragraphs about conversion rates nobody remembers afterward.

Jantzen’s proposal might never be built as drawn, but treating energy flows as choreography feels worth exploring. It hints at a future where infrastructure does not just work efficiently behind walls, it performs visibly in ways that invite people to understand systems that usually stay hidden until something breaks. Making those processes watchable might matter more than squeezing out another efficiency percentage point, which is something worth considering the next time we design places meant to teach.

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This Solar Pavilion Powers the Grid and Charges Phones from Its Seats

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The typical park pavilion or bus-stop canopy offers shade but little else. A roof on posts that sits in the sun all day, casting shadows, is treated as background infrastructure that is purely functional and visually forgettable. Michael Jantzen’s Solar Electric Pavilion is a response to that missed opportunity, turning a simple shelter into a piece of functional land art that also makes power for the community around it.

Jantzen has spent years exploring sustainable architectural experiments where structures are expressive about how they work. The Solar Electric Pavilion is conceived as a public gathering place and shade structure that generates and stores electricity from the sun for the local community, celebrating the relationship between form and renewable energy instead of hiding the technology behind walls or burying it on rooftops where no one sees it.

Designer: Michael Jantzen

Approaching the pavilion on a hot day, you are drawn under its open steel shell to escape the sun. Underneath, a circular field of cylindrical seats and tables invites people to sit, talk, or work, with a large ceiling fan overhead moving air. The space behaves like a familiar pavilion, a place to meet or rest, but everything around you is quietly tuned to capture and use sunlight.

Sixty photovoltaic panels are mounted along the curved and straight steel box beams, converting sunlight into electricity. Most of that power is sent into the local grid, while some is stored in batteries hidden inside the cylindrical seats. That stored energy runs the pavilion’s lighting at night, powers the ceiling fan, and lets visitors charge phones or laptops, turning sitting down into a direct connection with the solar infrastructure.

A raised circular platform accessed by a spiral stair lets people step up into the middle of the structure and look out over the landscape. From there, the pattern of beams and panels reads as a solar sculpture, framing sky and horizon. The pavilion is no longer just a roof but a small observatory of its own energy system and surroundings.

The pavilion sits within Jantzen’s body of work, which often uses modular steel, bold geometries, and renewable technologies to propose new public infrastructure. He treats solar panels, batteries, and structural steel as equal parts of the composition, designing for both performance and public engagement. The pavilion is conceived from the start as a cohesive amalgamation of shade, power, and sculpture that does not hide what it does.

The Solar Electric Pavilion suggests a different future for everyday public structures. Instead of passive shelters, they become small power stations that feed the grid, cool the air, and charge devices. Jantzen’s pavilion shows that sustainable architecture does not have to hide in technical rooms. It can stand in the open, invite people in, and make the work of clean energy part of the shared experience of a place.

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eufy Wraps the Front Door in Smarter Vision and Power at CES 2026

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The modern front door has a lot to juggle. Couriers drop parcels, friends arrive unannounced, kids race in and out, and somewhere in the background, there is a quiet worry about missing something important or not catching something suspicious. Many homes already have a patchwork of doorbells, lights, and locks that only half cooperate, or lean heavily on cloud subscriptions and frequent battery swaps that never quite stop being a chore.

eufy’s CES 2026 security lineup treats that threshold as a single design problem. The Video Doorbell S4, Solar Wall Light Cam S4, and Smart Lock E40 share a few big ideas: higher‑resolution cameras, AI and radar‑assisted detection, and power systems built to run for months or indefinitely, while keeping most of the intelligence and storage local instead of streaming everything to a server somewhere far away.

Designer: eufy (Anker)

eufy Video Doorbell S4

The Video Doorbell S4 is the greeter. It wraps a 3K sensor into a 180‑degree horizontal and vertical field of view, which means it can see from the ceiling down to the doormat and across the entire porch in one shot. That panoramic view captures faces, packages, and anyone standing off to the side, so you are not left guessing whether a delivery was left just out of frame.

eufy’s OmniTrack technology and built‑in radar focus on people rather than every passing car or branch. As someone approaches, radar detects motion and distance, then AI locks on and adjusts the zoom so the visitor stays centered, whether it is a courier bending to drop a parcel or a neighbor walking up the path. The 3K clarity holds up to around 26 feet, with 16 GB of local storage keeping recordings on the device.

eufy Solar Wall Light Cam S4

The Solar Wall Light Cam S4 is the guardian that wraps light and vision around the entryway or side yard. It combines a 4K camera with an f/1.6 lens and a vertically adjustable mount, up to 45 degrees, so it can look down into blind spots near the wall while still watching the approach. The 4K resolution and color night vision make faces and details legible even when the only illumination is the light itself.

Power is handled by a detachable 2 W solar panel feeding a 10,000 mAh battery, which gives freedom in where you mount it. The panel can sit where the sun actually hits, while the light and camera stay where they are most useful. Multiple lighting modes let the fixture shift roles, daily illumination for paths, brighter security lighting when motion is detected, and festive RGB scenes that turn the same hardware into holiday decor.

eufy Smart Lock E40

The Smart Lock E40 is the final layer at the door, replacing keys and fingerprints with 3D face recognition. A quick glance is enough to unlock for pre‑registered users, which matters most when your hands are full of groceries or luggage, and you would rather not dig for keys or touch a screen. A built‑in 2K camera with a head‑to‑toe view records who is at the door, aligning the lock with the rest of eufy’s camera‑centric security story.

The E40 runs on a PowerDuo system, a 15,000 mAh main battery backed by an 800 mAh reserve that keeps the lock alive during swaps or unexpected drain. It is rated IP65 for weather resistance and carries ANSI/BHMA Grade 2 certification for mechanical security. On the software side, it speaks Matter, Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings, sitting comfortably inside a broader smart‑home setup while doing most recognition and storage locally.

eufy at CES 2026: A Front Door That Thinks for Itself

These three products sketch out eufy’s view of the front door in 2026, not as a collection of unrelated gadgets, but as a layered system where the doorbell tracks arrivals in 3K, the wall light extends 4K color vision and ambient lighting without new wiring, and the smart lock recognizes faces and controls access while adding its own 2K camera. The common threads, higher‑resolution optics, AI and radar, generous batteries and solar, and local‑first design, make the entryway feel less like a tangle of hardware and more like a single, thoughtful interface between home and street.

The post eufy Wraps the Front Door in Smarter Vision and Power at CES 2026 first appeared on Yanko Design.

Google TV Solar Remote G32 Never Needs Battery Replacements

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TV remotes have a habit of dying at the worst possible time, usually right before you finally find something worth watching. The familiar hunt for AAA batteries begins, followed by the quiet pile of dead cells that builds up in a drawer until you remember to recycle them. Google’s new G32 reference remote for Google TV takes a different route by running on ambient indoor light instead of disposable batteries.

The G32 is a Google TV reference remote built by Ohsung Electronics and powered by Swedish startup Epishine’s indoor solar cells. This isn’t a one-off concept, but a template TV makers can adopt for their own Google TV devices. The goal is a self-charging, maintenance-free remote that never needs disposable batteries and quietly reduces waste in the background while sitting on your coffee table between Netflix binges.

Designer: Epishine, Ohsung

Epishine’s technology is tuned specifically for indoor conditions. Thin, flexible, bifacial solar cells made from organic materials are printed at industrial scale and designed to harvest the light already in your living room from lamps and windows. They turn it into a slow, steady trickle of power rather than relying on bright sunshine. Because they are bifacial, they capture light from both sides, no matter how the remote is resting on the couch.

This changes the remote’s design in subtle but meaningful ways. There is no battery door on the back, no need to stock AAAs, and no reason to open the shell once it leaves the factory. The solar window at the bottom of the front face is integrated like a dark glass panel, keeping the silhouette clean. As long as you use the remote in a reasonably lit room, it quietly tops itself up and stays ready.

Current Google TV Remote Reference Designs (G10, G20)

Current Google TV Remote Reference Designs (G10, G20)

The G32 keeps the familiar Google TV layout. A large circular D-pad sits at the top, with home and back keys, dedicated buttons for YouTube and Netflix, and a bright blue “Free TV” key in the middle. The solar area occupies the lower third. In photos, it looks like a normal Google TV controller that just happens to have an extra screen at the bottom, even though it is really the light-harvesting zone.

Of course, Epishine and Google highlight that billions of batteries are thrown away each year, and remotes are one of the few devices almost everyone owns. Swapping disposable cells for indoor solar in a product that ships by the millions has a different impact than doing it in a niche gadget. It also nudges manufacturers toward thinner, simpler shells without battery compartments cluttering the back.

The G32 solar remote is a small but smart change to an object we rarely think about. It doesn’t ask users to change habits or remember to charge yet another device. Instead, it quietly uses the light already in the room to keep working. If TV makers pick up this reference design, the most boring gadget on the coffee table might end up being one of the more thoughtful ones.

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Concept House With 5 Segments Rotates to Catch Sun and Wind

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Imagine waking up in a home that changes shape with the sun, rotates to catch the breeze, and adjusts its silhouette at your whim throughout the day and night. The idea of a house that adapts to its environment and to you sounds like science fiction, but it’s at the heart of the Interactive Segmented House of the Future by Michael Jantzen, a concept that reimagines what home can be.

This visionary concept explores what happens when architecture becomes kinetic, modular, and deeply responsive to natural forces and human desires. The house offers a glimpse into a future where homes are as dynamic as the people who live in them, constantly adjusting to weather, light, and personal preference without requiring you to adapt to static architectural decisions. The design challenges every assumption about residential architecture.

Designer: Michael Jantzen

The house is built around five identical, curved steel segments that rotate around a central glass-floored living space like petals around a flower’s center. Each segment can pivot independently or together in coordinated movements, allowing the home to catch sunlight for passive warming, funnel wind for natural cooling, collect rainwater for storage, or frame the best landscape views throughout changing seasons.

Photovoltaic panels on the exterior generate electricity for internal needs, while rain-catching forms and wind scoops make the house self-sustaining and potentially off-grid in remote locations. Each segment is carefully shaped with formations that serve as windows, ventilation scoops, or water collectors. The occupants can fine-tune the building’s environmental response by positioning segments to meet immediate needs or simply experimenting with different visual configurations.

Inside, the glass floor creates a sense of floating in open space, with air and light circulating freely through openings without visual obstruction from opaque surfaces. All essential furniture is hidden in semicircular cabinets beneath the glass floor, rising up and unfolding only when needed for sleeping, eating, or working throughout daily routines. The result is a space that can be left completely open or configured for specific activities.

The absence of fixed partitions and the ability to clear the floor completely make the interior endlessly adaptable, supporting everything from quiet solitude to lively gatherings with friends. The glass floor provides an uninterrupted 360-degree view of the space and the segments rotating around it, enhancing the sensation of living inside a responsive, almost organic structure that breathes with environmental conditions.

While the Interactive Segmented House of the Future is a stunning vision worth celebrating, it faces practical challenges worth acknowledging honestly and thoughtfully. The mechanical complexity of rotating large structural segments, potential maintenance needs for motors and bearings, and the demands of glass flooring and custom fabrication could make real-world construction costly and require ongoing professional care and specialized expertise that may not be readily available.

Living in a house like this would mean waking up to new views daily, adjusting your home to match the weather naturally, and enjoying a space that feels alive and ever-changing. For anyone dreaming of a home that’s as flexible and imaginative as their own life and aspirations, this concept offers a bold proposal that blurs boundaries between architecture and living machine.

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Self-storage rooftops will become a nationwide 100MW+ solar farm

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Electrek reports that a solar energy company is renting 8.5 million square feet of roof space from the National Storage Affiliates Trust’s (NSA) buildings for its newest solar panel project.

The commercial and community solar developer Solar Landscape’s new rooftop solar panel grid on the NSA’s 1,052 self-storage facilities and properties across 42 states and Puerto Rico are expected to produce at least 100 megawatts of solar capacity. The NSA, headquartered in Greenwood Village, Colorado, is one of the nation’s largest self-storage operators with brands like iStorage, Move It, Northwest and SecurCare.

These solar energy panels won’t just generate power for the NSA’s facilities. The panels will also provide clean power to nearby businesses and homes for a discounted price.

One of the challenges of implementing solar energy is finding enough space for the solar panels. These panels can take up a lot of space, like the Noor Abu Dhabi solar plant that set a world record in 2019 with 3.2 million solar panels taking up over 3 square miles of space.

Solar Landscape and the NSA may have found an interesting solution to solar panel projects’ space problem. If this partnership is successful, it could inspire similar deals for other communities looking to benefit from solar power technology.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/self-storage-rooftops-will-become-a-nationwide-100mw-solar-farm-223004138.html?src=rss

Oxford scientists’ new light-absorbing material can turn everyday objects into solar panels

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Oxford University scientists may have solved one of the greatest hindrances of expanding access to solar energy. Scientists from the university’s physics department have created an ultra-thin layer of material that can be applied to the exterior of objects with sunlight access in place of bulky silicon-based solar panels.

The ultra-thin and flexible film is made by stacking layers of light-absorbing layers of perovskite that are just over one micron thick. The new materials are also 150 times thinner than a traditional silicon wafer and can produce 5 percent more energy efficiency than traditional, single-layer silicon photovoltaics, according to a statement released by Oxford University.

Dr. Shauifeng Hu, a postdoctoral fellow at Oxford’s physics department, says he believes “this approach could enable the photovoltaic devices to achieve far greater efficiencies, exceeding 45 percent.”

This new approach to solar energy technology could also reduce the cost of solar energy. Due to their thinness and flexibility, they can be applied to almost any surface. This reduces the cost of construction and installation and could increase the number of solar energy farms producing more sustainable energy.

This technology, however, is still in the research stage and the university doesn’t mention the long-term stability of the newly designed perovskite panels. Going from 6 to 27 percent solar energy efficiency in five years is an impressive feat but stability has always been limited compared to photovoltaic technology, according to the US Department of Energy. A 2016 study in the science journal Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells also noted that perovskite can provide “efficient, low-cost energy generation” but it also has “poor stability” due its sensitivity to moisture.

Solar energy has also become a cheaper power option just over the last decade. The cost of solar photovoltaic technology has dropped by 90 percent in the last 10 years, according to the Global Change Data Lab.

New solar energy farms are popping up all over the world. The US Department of Energy announced earlier this month its turning an 8,000-acre piece of land that once housed parts of the nuclear weapons program known as the Manhattan Project into a solar farm. Last month, Google invested in a Taiwanese solar company to build a 1 gigawatt pipeline in the region.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/oxford-scientists-new-light-absorbing-material-can-turn-everyday-objects-into-solar-panels-200410760.html?src=rss

Solar bot is a smart device concept that makes solar power more accessible

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Solar power is something that is pretty important if we need to reduce our carbon footprint and our electricity consumption. But it’s still not something that’s easily accessible for everyone or something that’s portable and easy to use or access. A recent invention from Jackery, a portable power and green outdoor energy company, might be the thing we need to revolutionize how the ordinary consumer can access and use solar energy.

Designer: Jackery

The Solar Mars Bot was named one of the Best Inventions of 2023 by Time Magazine, specifically in the Green Energy category. It is a robot type machine that is a photovoltaic energy storage device equipped with various sensors to enable it to gather as much solar power as it can store. It has laser radar and camera modules to help it get around. It’s smart enough to roll around and find spots where it can align its panels with sunlight and even avoid obstacles.

The energy that it is able to gather is stored in a lithium iron phosphate battery and then you will be able to power your devices through any of its connectors including ordinary earthed sockets, USB-C and USB-A ports. You can take this solar robot with you when camping or on any outdoor activity or when you’re just lounging in your backyard or swimming pool and you need to charge your devices.

For now it seems to still be in the conceptual stage and Jackery may be creating a prototype for testing. But if ever it reaches the consumer market it will make solar energy common for those who are conscious about their electricity consumption. Hopefully we see some progress with this “best invention” soon as we all want to be able to regulate our carbon consumption over the next few years.

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