NEXT STEPS

What's Next for the Solar Floatie?

After establishing our technology, we believe our next step is to expand its capabilities and its reach. We would like to see how future teams approach the challenge of getting this technology into the right hands. Some ideas in terms of next steps that we did not get the chance to act on include reaching out to open innovation or open source organizations that deal with sustainable development. A partnership with these kinds of organizations would be helpful in terms of outreach so that we can get in touch with relevant communities who may be interested in our project. Another potential next step would be to reach out to universities in the regions of the communities we would like to impact. Creating a cross-university partnership and having not only a multidisciplinary team, but also an international team, would give the project the advantage of being able to leverage many different perspectives, including a more local perspective from the university students abroad.

From our talk with stakeholders and experts in the field, we found that another problem faced by off-grid communities is the lack of storage for solar energy. This could potentially be a new challenge future teams could work on that would complement our existing technology. By having both an affordable solar concentrator as well as a means to store the energy produced, this would greatly increase the social impact potential of our project, addressing all the needs of communities. Finally, throughout the process undertaken by the next team, we would like to see the Solar Floatie website being systematically updated so stakeholders and potential partners can better understand the technology and its growth. The website should be modified to include a user feedback forum where users can interact and ask their questions. As the next team undertakes the task of expanding the potential of the project, a consistent flow in the feedback loop is needed in order to further improve the technology.