Solar shingles generates solar and wind power with the same system. Photo courtesy Inhabitat.com image:37742:0::0

Teresita Cochraine created this project along with her brother. She cut a leaf-shaped solar panel for her brother and then decided to create this solar and wind hybrid power technology.

Just like ivy climbing on buildings on trees, their project named GROW uses a series of flexible solar cells as leaves. They are designed to harness solar power, while the wind that makes them flutter is then converted to energy. Thus, it produces hybrid energy from both the sun and the wind.

The solar leaves are made of 100 per cent recycled polyethylene, and are available in a variety of colors and opacities and can add aesthetics to the buildings.


Solar leaf.

They created a first project GROW.1 which is currently at the Museum of Modern Art both for art purposes as well as for power generation. Their second project GROW.2, is used for residences, as the hybrid system is built on top of a stainless steel mesh system and allows ivy and other crawler planets to grow with it as shown below.


Solar leaf in a house.
Teresita wants to make this commercially available as soon as possible. She wants to sell them through regular stores so people can start building their systems.

I think this is a novel idea that provides energy from dual sources as well as provides building aesthetics. Also, it uses readily available polyethylene so it can be mass produced at a cheaper cost than silicon-based panels.