Solar Thin-Film as Art?

Thin Film Ribbon Art (photo by Martina Decker and Peter Yeadon)

The 2010 Land Art Generator Design Competition features beautiful solar thin-film in a desert sculpture outside of Dubai.  Winding across the United Arab Emirates desert, the solar sculpture, called the “Light Sanctuary,” was created by Martina Decker and Peter Yeadon of Decker Yeadon LLC.

Designed to resemble the desert’s sand dunes, the thin-film solar panels have been sculpted into an artistic, but functioning solar photovoltaic plant.  Created from 25 mile of dye-sensitized thin film solar sheets that are 10 meters tall, its hard to believe that this beautiful art sculpture in the desert can also generate clean energy.

The designers selected amber hues for the the 80,000 square meters of rippling solar thin film in order to match the desert hues of the surrounding terrain.  The material is mounted on poles that have been designed to evoke Bedouin tent support imagery, consistent with desert cultures.

Walking through the thin-film solar sculpture (image by Martina Decker and Peter Yeadon)

The artists described the inspiration for the solar thin-film sculpture:

“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.”

Sure, its beautiful, but perhaps most amazing is how functional this solar sculpture is!  Under ideal situations, the solar array can generate over 4,500 megawatt-hours of electricity for the region.

If you want to see solar thin-film as art, you’ll have to travel to the Ras Al Khor Wildlife Sanctuary, a wetland conservation area in Dubai that attracts migratory waterfowl from the Asian subcontinent.

Tags: dubai, Land Art Generator Design Competition, solar art, solar photovoltaic plant, solar thin film, thin film solar