Green Summer Dream: Solar-Powered Floating Island

By Steph in Art & Design, Technology & Gadgets

Ever daydream about having your own private island? Those dreams are about to get a little more high-tech. Meet the Solar Floating Resort (SFR), a concept design by Michele Puzzolani. This miniature private resort can sleep six people and features an underwater observation room as well as an on-deck Jacuzzi. It’s also covered in thin-film photovoltaic panels to soak up all those rays.

Its spacious interior boasts a full kitchen, skylights and lots of windows to take in the views, and a spiral staircase leads down to the underwater viewing area. There are two single and two double bedrooms, each with a private bathroom.

The eco-friendly qualities of this design go beyond just solar power. The designer explains, “SFR has been designed with the industrial viewpoint of fabricating repetitive standard elements, using molding technology. This way, the master molds can reproduce hundreds of pieces cutting down considerably the fabrication costs, like in the car industry. Therefore, the main originality of SFR resides in its modular system that permits to construct all the parts in a factory, transport them by containers on site by ground, air or sea and to assemble the whole in a few weeks, like a ‘Lego.’”

“Thin films photovoltaic work under low light conditions as well as artificial light. The electrical current produced by the thin films photovoltaic is stored into batteries with an inverter converting direct current (DC) into alternative current (AC), almost twenty four hours the day, providing enough energy to the entire electrical and propulsion systems. Thin films photovoltaic have a dye that absorbs light and transforms it into electricity. It is a solar cell very cheap compare to the silicon cell. The dye is based on a chlorophyll molecule, the chemical that plants use to absorb sunlight. That’s science imitating nature! It’s called artificial photosynthesis.”