🌐 Solar Panels are Griddy
(139) Diverse solutions top early Feb funding list
Good Morning
What we’re reading this week:
Fire Weather (JV)
The Perverse Policies that Fuel Wildfires (NY)
Crux 2023 Market Intelligence Report (C)
The Greendicator
Top Deals of the Week
Swedish hybrid-electric airplane producer Heart Aerospace raised a $107M Series B led by United Airlines, Sagitta Ventures, and EQT (EU)
Enterprise sustainability platform Watershed raised a $100M Series C led by Greenoaks (VC)
Restoration Forest Products Group, a sustainable forest products company, raised $95M in financing led by Invesco (BW)
Transmutex, a Swiss nuclear engineering company, raised a ~$22M Series A extension led by Union Square Ventures and Steel Atlas (FN)
Boston Metal, a metals technology solutions company, raised a $20M Series C2 from Marunouchi Innovation Partners (BW)
Crux, a sustainable finance technology company, raised an $18.2M Series A led by a16z (VC)
Planet A Foods, a B2B sustainable ingredients company, raised a $15.4M Series A led by World Fund (TC)
Cultivo, a startup building a pipeline of nature-based carbon removal projects, raised a $14M Series A led by MassMutual Ventures and Octopus Energy Generation (BW)
Tau Group, an Italian energy transition and decarbonization startup, raised a $12.1M Series B extension led by DP Venture Capital and Santander Alternative Investments (FN)
Carbon credit insurance startup CarbonPool raised a $12M round led by Heartcore Capital and Vorwerk Ventures (FN)
GreenSpark, a startup building a modern software platform for the metal recycling industry, raised $9.4M in new funding led by Zero Infinity Partners and Third Prime (BW)
CitySwift, an AI-powered platform for optimizing public transportation, raised a $7.7M round led by Gresham House Ventures (EU)
Natural materials startup Xampla raised a $7M round led by Amadeus Capital Partners, Horizon Ventures, and others (FN)
Clean chemistry startup AZUL Energy raised a $3.2M Series A led by Spiral Capital (BW)
Cnergreen, a startup manufacturing stable foams for CO2 injection, raised a $2M seed round led by Rhapsody Venture Partners (FN)
Yume, a startup helping manufacturers resell potential food waste, raised a $1.3M seed round led by Investible’s Climate Tech Fund (TC)
Mobile GIS Services, a UK-based provider of geospital software for utility companies, raised ~$783K in funding from NPIF – Mercia Equity Finance (FN)
Weather intelligence and technology startup Meteomatics raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Lockheed Martin Ventures (VC)
Green Theory
Why do solar panels look like grids and not trees?
In human-engineered objects, and nature itself, best-in-class problem solving offers lessons on how different systems respond to the same challenges. With patience, and observation, sometimes one solution can leap across contexts to unlock new frontiers in design.
Fast Flyers
Take, for example, the peregrine falcon, the fastest animal in the world. Diving at speeds of over 240 miles per hour, the crow-sized raptor might be thought to suffocate as it plunges through the air—currents diverting around it. Instead, tiny cones in the center of their nostrils break up the airflow and reduce drag, allowing a steady, breathable stream of air while on the attack.
To take airplanes to the jet age, the very same cones were needed to control airflow and intake at high speeds. Engineers took inspiration from the peregrine to design these cones, and you might recognize them on commercial airliners to this day. Peregrines evolved this solution over many generations, but human ingenuity could find and apply the lesson in just one.
The first organic solar cells
Plants are, in many senses, natural solar cells: converting sunlight into energy, collecting photons, mostly passively. Early plants likely evolved under water, in low-light, diffuse conditions. Fractal branching seems to serve photosynthesizing in low and changing light conditions well. With the sun moving throughout the day, and crowded canopies, many flora can be found favoring this adaptation on land, today.
Researchers in Korea set out to apply these branching plant lessons to solar photovoltaic module arrangements, and discovered promising returns over linear shapes, especially in ambient light, or confined spaces.
So why the grid-shaped solar cells?
The design constraints placed on solar PV modules aren’t exactly the same as plants. For one, the ease of manufacturing grid-shaped busbars meets more scalable machining today, and far outweighs the returns to angular fractals.
Another big difference: leading PV generally performs better in higher intensity light—the reverse of many plants’ responses. Further, given our opportunity to deploy solar in sunnier spaces, research and development hasn’t prioritized lower-light applications.
The future of solar cell faces
In the coming years, the boxy grids of today’s solar cells could start to look retro. If you’ve used an old pocket calculator, you’re likely familiar with low-light solar power already, and one freshly funded startup is bringing this onboard power supply back into the hands of consumers. Connecting passive low-light power generation to other uses is rather plant-based.
On the fractal front, researchers at the University of Oregon found that busbar designs grew more aesthetically appealing to folks, the more closely the designs resembled natural shapes. Meeting manufacturing needs better than oblique-angle alternatives, this H-shaped fractal pattern shown above won the research challenge.
Evolved to Survive
Researchers rightly urge caution in applying natural adaptations to engineering challenges. Indeed, our opportunities to leap through the expanding design space have never been greater, especially aided by digital simulation, machine learning, and 3D printing. Blind evolution, on the other hand, has a risk of optimizing around local maximums. We ought not be held back by nature’s solutions, right?
Take, for example, asymmetrical flight: a possibility unseen in nature, with which humanity has barely experimented. Though it sounds absurd, promising asymmetric test aircraft have laid the groundwork for a potential breakthrough in optimizing flying efficiency over a range of speeds. If we relied exclusively on natural adaptations, we’d never find these types of innovations. Still, even with our abilities to test and prove out new methods, they don’t always fall into practice, and planes of today are largely stuck in nature’s local maximum of symmetric flight.
With climate change increasingly reminding us of the connections between our built world and natural systems, the chance to pollinate learnings across domains is, in fact, at its height. It is because of our extended powers in searching through the design space—simulating and prototyping our way to new solutions—and not despite it, that we have all the more reason to revisit, and discover, natural adaptations that could light the path to novel breakthroughs. As new methods of moving information and fabricating hardware meet the urgency of protecting planetary tipping points, the engine of life will continue to inspire us toward survival and flourishing, even if today’s solar panels look a bit stuffy.
The Closer
Bisti / De-Na-Zin Wilderness (Source)