As inhabitants of the digital world, we are more or less creatures of convenience. While we enjoy the fruits of labor’s most intricately designed commodities, we are continually looking for ways to simplify our navigation and utilization of them. Solar technology, for instance, is no cakewalk, yet with the popularization of green building mechanisms like solar roofing, the industry is finding itself increasingly able to turn up fresh innovations that appeal to consumer intuition and outperform market competitors who came before them. Smartflower, an Austria-based company, makes this especially evident, having recently introduced to the market “the world’s first all-in-one solar system.”
PHOTO: COURTESY OF SMARTFLOWER
It’s called the Smartflower POP, and it has been received as the brand’s premier product—with good reason. Portable and easily foldable, the solar fixture is an extraordinary example of the combined ideal of maximal performance outcome and minimal user practicality. The device assumes the aesthetically appealing appearance of a robotic sunflower and is applied by way of a highly simplified ground mount installation that takes less than an hour to complete. “About five years ago we came up with the idea,” says Alexander Swatek, Smartflower founder and CEO. “We wanted to create an intelligent solar unit that involved a fully integrated all-in-one approach.” The “all-one-one” aspect of the Smartflower POP photovoltaic system is the product’s most famed quality, which is not surprising considering most solar fixtures on the market are distributed as modules.
Plus, unlike most solar panel outfits, the Smartflower POP isn’t merely limited to custom-made fixtures. On the contrary, it is industrially produced and can be simply transported to the purchaser and hooked up with plug-and-play ease. However, as far as distribution goes, the product’s availability is currently predominately limited to Europe. The results, still, have made themselves abundantly clear. The amount of energy that can be generated by the Smartflower POP ranges from 3,400 and 6,200 kilowatts annually, which is 40% more than conventional solar roof mechanisms, and rises comfortably beyond the energy requirements of the average household in a host of European countries. The high amount of electricity produced by the array, in addition, is used to charge a sophisticated automation system. Whereas your run-of-the mill roof unit is required to remain rigidly positioned in one fixed direction toward the sun, the Smartflower POP can trace the sun in its orbit.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF SMARTFLOWER
Supplementary to the Smartflower POP, the company offers a modest variety of specialized variations of it: the Smartflower POP+, for example, harvests sunlight in ample quantities, impelling the system to either store or utilize energy depending on the present solar condition. The Smartflower POP-e, on the other hand, is almost an entirely different apparatus. As sales of electric cars soar across Europe, this product equips the continental expanse with a charging station that upholds the same all-in-one principle for which the rest of Smartflower’s bounty is beloved.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF SMARTFLOWER
Smartfower also aims to please the customer’s aesthetic proclivities. Instead of a large mechanical slab crowning the roof of one’s home, the Smartflower’s floral figure imposes a more artful adjunct to its residence. These fixtures can be placed anywhere on the property that the owner deems most pleasing—a backyard garden, perhaps. “The units come in 8 different colors,” Swatek says, adding that it’s played a helpful role in getting them attention. Some people who aren’t necessarily interested in or privy to the issues of energy efficiency and sustainability are simply attracted to the design, thereby leading them to elucidating facts and information when they proceed to research the product. “Everyone says our product makes producing energy more sexy,” Swatek says. “It looks great, it’s not boring, and I’ve met people who own it that are quite emotionally connected to it.”
