The Power of Design: Product Innovation in Sustainable Energy Technologies

E.1 Introduction

Photovoltaic (PV) cells have been introduced to consumer products since as early as the mid-1980s and have found many applications in consumer products since that time, for example calculators and wristwatches. A large percentage of the PV products presently available on the market, however, do not function properly or have shortcomings that make them noncompetitive with their conventionally powered counterparts (Kan, Van Beers, and Brezet, 2004). In addition, the present knowledge base on systems powered by small PV units does not cover the knowledge necessary for suitable consumer product designs (Veefkind, 2004). This may result in poor energetic performance, which users perceive as inappropriate, especially for PV-powered devices.

To investigate industrial design processes with regard to technical engineering solutions, we selected a test product: the solar-powered wireless mouse (SPM) (Alsema et al., 2005). The choice for this SPM fulfilled our aim to tackle the many problems frequently encountered by PV product designers. The key issue – to select a challenging product case – was fulfilled to such an extent that it was initially unclear whether an SPM product could be a feasible product concept at all. Variations of device use patterns and available irradiation lead to uncertain energy balances. In the case of heavy device use and little irradiation, it may not be possible to power an SPM on a solely PV-generated charge. Furthermore, the hand of the user ...