Theory meets reality

It is a few days left until we leave for Texel and now it is time to create truly good documents. Already some weeks ago we received a 4-page feedback document from Drs. Cuppen on the work we had produced so far. Using this, we totally reconstructed our document outline and now it is time to actually finalize the docs. Our aim is to have the entire document finished before the trip to Texel, and it only needs to be polished on the island. And although the weather forecast predicts a lot of rain, we hope that

On the island it will be time for our theories to be tested in reality. We hope to trigger people into thinking more in a “blue economy way” and thereby adjusting the way they treat their waste. Which is of course an old-fashioned word because it are future resources. This week was about how we as engineers from Delft (although I personally don’t really qualify here…) can contribute to sustainability. Amongst other things, we visited the YES! Delft start-up incubator.

The “start-up of the week” that I’d therefore like to finalize with is therefore one from our good old Delft and is pretty famous. But I chose them because they execute exactly the title of this column – theory meets reality at the start-up Eternal Sun. Being known as one of the most successful start-ups of both Climate-KIC and YES!Delft, Eternal Sun has created a device that emulates sunlight in the exact same wavelength as the real sun and is therefore ideal to test for instance solar panels and objects that have to endure the sun. One of the most important properties of a solar panel is its efficiency, which is pretty hard to test until you expose it to real sunlight, which is of course not always available. Sunlight has different intensities all around the world. Therefore is a machine that can truly test the performance of solar powered devices a real solution in solar panel development.

Our designs for Texel could be seen as our own solar panel that needs to be tested. And although one could argue that we lack the machine of Eternal Sun, it is our job to create a proper research design so we can metaphorically recreate the Eternal Sun machine and test the “efficiency” of our design. Let’s hope that our machine will be waterproof…!