Sun Flower

September 25, 2017

A new flower-shaped solar panel follows the sun as it moves across the sky—just like a real plant. The smartflower, created by a company of the same name based in Austria, has petal-shaped panels that open at sunrise and close at night. The panels tilt throughout the day to get maximum exposure to sunlight, which the smartflower converts into electricity.

The smartflower’s manufacturers say that its sun-tracking abilities allow it to generate up to 40 percent more energy than traditional stationary solar panels. They estimate that even in cloudy places, it can produce a significant portion of the energy needs for a household.

YOUR TURN

A traditional solar panel of the same size as the smartflower will generate about 4,430 kilowatt-hours of energy in a year. The smartflower’s maximum annual output is about 1.4 times that. How many kilowatt-hours will the smartflower produce in a year? Record your work and answer on our Numbers in the News answer sheet.