Biomimicry is the burgeoning field describing how designers look at nature’s solutions for today’s problems. Experts from the University of Exeter have taken the approach. They found that if you want to make solar energy cheaper and more efficient, it may be good to look at butterflies. By mimicking the V-shaped posture adopted by Cabbage White butterflies to heat up their flight muscles before take-off, the amount of power produced by solar panels can increase by almost 50 percent. Crucially, by replicating this ‘wing-like’ structure, the power-to-weight ratio of the overall solar energy structure is increased 17-fold, making it vastly more efficient. Nature shows the way.
Butterfly may know how to make solar energy cheaper and more efficient
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