Art Sculpture or Innovative Solar Ribbon Array?

Artists propose an incredible winding solar array through the UAE

Whoever developed the industrial design creed that form should always follow function may have been thinking of this year’s submission for the 2010 Land Art Generator Design Competition, which shows ribbons of solar thin-film winding across the desert in the United Arab Emirates.

Prompted by Dubai architectural firm Studied Impact’s request for land-based art that could also produce clean energy, and designed by Martina Decker and Peter Yeadon of Decker Yeadon LLC, New York City, the solar sculpture aims to incorporate the desert’s visual effects of wind-rippled dunes, stark light and deep shadows into a functioning solar photovoltaic (PV) plant.

Creators call it the “Light Sanctuary,” and the mirage-like effect of the dye-sensitized, thin-film solar sheets, or “ribbons,” is created by about 40 kilometers (25 miles) of thin-film third-generation photovoltaics 10 meters in height, each positioned at least 6 meters above the desert floor.

Said the artists: “The ribbons are folded and swooped and nestled and caressed into complex waveforms that evoke natural landscape formations of desert and coastline, sand and water — but which are actually technologically optimized for the oriented exposure of their surface to light, heat, and shade.”

Indeed, the array is ingeniously engineered. Under optimal calibration, the proposed solar ribbons would produce 4,592 MW-hours of electricity for the United Arab Emirates.

The 80,000 square meters (262,467 square feet) of lightly rippling solar material gets its umber hue from plant-based materials to maintain the eco-friendly image, and the whole is mounted at intervals on masts, or poles, which are themselves reminiscent of Bedouin tent supports and the romance of nomadic desert cultures.

The real-world location is next to the Ras Al Khor Wildlife Sanctuary, a Dubai landmark and wetland conservation area that attracts huge numbers of migratory waterfowl from the Asian subcontinent. In a more metaphorical vein, the solar sculpture exists in that realm where function and form collide to create working art.

Posted on August 27th in Solar Products by Jeanne.