Technology Idea of the Week

"All I've heard from you lot so far is a lot of hot air, so in the interests of climate change: you're fired!"

A classic Lord Sugar quote from the BBC series The Apprentice (top on liners blog). Nice to see a acknowledgement of environmental change as well! Business plan competitions have become quite a major event for entrepreneurs over the last few years and are a great way to get a head start in business, unless of course you make a fool of yourself on The Apprentice. The CleanTech Challenge is a competition run by University College London and London Business School which looks for ideas which provide a "sustainable environmental benefit". So for this weeks tech innovation I am going to look at the 2013 winners of the CleanTech Challenge. 

The Power Window - Delft University of Technology 

• A luminescent foil is placed over a glass window
• The foil absorbs photons of light and scatters them towards the edge of the window 
• Solar panels around the window frame absorb the light and generate electricity
• The students at Delft University of Technology developed a new material which helped improve the efficiency of this process by a factor of five
• For more information check out the Delft TU Website or CleanTech Challenge. There is also an interesting video on the subject, link is posted below. 

A Solar Concentrator developed by MIT, similar to the Delft Invention

Delft TU Power Window YouTube Clip

It is really interesting to see the variety of business plan competitions that are focused on finding technological solutions to environmental and energy challenges. What is also interesting is that often these competitions are organised and funded by large engineering or energy companies as well as by research institutions. I think this is a really positive move for the green movement: by making it a business opportunity you can guarantee peoples interest and investment to make real change. I look forward to see what ideas come out of the competition this year!