13 Year Old Discovers How to Improve Winter Solar Efficiency

A student from New York has discovered that copying nature’s design could lead to significant improvements in solar panel winter efficiency - by up to 50 percent.

Whilst out hiking, Aidan Dwyer noticed something special about how tree leaves grow, and his astute observation could change how we think about solar energy. He realised that trees arrange their branches and leaves in a specific mathematical pattern known as the Fibonacci sequence. This pattern appears throughout nature, where each number equals the sum of the two numbers before it (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and so on).

The junior high school student wondered if trees use this pattern because it helps them collect sunlight better than other arrangements. This consistent pattern across tree species suggests that nature has found the most efficient way to arrange branches and leaves.

To test his idea, he built two small solar power systems in his backyard and, after months of testing, Dwyer’s results showed clear advantages in solar panel winter efficiency for the tree-inspired design. The solar tree performed much better than flat panels during “off-peak” times when sunlight comes at low angles or gets blocked by clouds.

During winter months, when the sun stays low in the sky, the tree design collects nearly 50 percent more energy than traditional flat panels. This improvement could be especially valuable in northern climates where winter sunlight is limited.

While Dwyer’s initial results are promising, larger-scale testing would be needed to confirm the benefits for commercial applications. In the meantime, Dwyer’s research has earned him a Young Naturalist Award from the American Museum of Natural History.

Source