Father and son Dan and David Curran wanted to put solar panels on their San Diego home, but the roof wasn't really right for the installation. Then one day, when the two were walking through Home Depot, David, a recent college grad, had a bright idea.
Why not stick solar panels on the outside of wooden window shutters?
The Currans are now showing off their soon-to-patented invention, a handsome solar shutter, at West Coast Green, a huge green building conference that takes place annually here in San Francisco.
The Curran's Plug 'n Save solar shutters are custom-made from bamboo and beautifully detailed. A modular inlay along the edge of every other shutter blade conceals the cavity where the electrical workings connecting the solar panels are hidden.
The panels, which are about the size of an index card, are visible only from the outside of the house. Because they are used to block the glare from overly-bright sun, homeowners just naturally tilt them to catch the sun's rays at just the right times of day.
At 23, David Curran, a recent business graduate of Ohio Weslyan University, is a bit too old for the role of boy inventor, but he evidences all the enthusiasm and energy of one. He drafted his semi-retired dad Dan, who is skilled in fabrication and has a home shop, to help with designing the solar shutters. The two experimented in a home shop with digging out wooden shutter planes with a router, and with different ways of mounting the solar cells before settling on the final design.
"Solar cells are tricky and delicate," says David. "If you look at one the wrong way, it will break. So it was hard figuring out how to secure them to the panels." David and his team found an epoxy that not only attaches the cells to the shutter panes, but also, according to tests that benchmark the solar shutters against rooftop PV installations, also prolong the life of the solar cells.
David has hired three of his friends - he calls them "the smartest guys I know" - as directors of the company, and his mom, Ruth Curran also contributes by looking for ways to make the infant company "as green as socially responsible as it possibly can be." Dad is an experienced entrepeneur who who started and ran a firm called Fantastic Plastics in Colorado, having received the same advice that Dustin Hoffman got in the film The Graduate, and around the same era. But Dan says firmly, "I'm letting David take over."
The Plug n' Save shutter is made from bamboo, a rapidly renewable and earth-friendly resource, and it is finished with paints and stains no that contain no toxic VOCs (volatile organic chemicals).
The company is a member of 1% for the Planet and donates 1% of all sales to environmental nonprofits.
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