Architect Sheila Kennedy has, with her colleagues (whose names we don’t know, hence no attribution) designed The Soft House; Jorge Chapa at Inhabitat has an excellent post on Kennedy’s prototype house whose solar-collecting curtains would produce 16KWH. We strongly recommend you read Chapa’s post – and that you check in regularly at Inhabitat.

Given our concern with worst-case scenarios – and preventing them – this technological use could go far in prevention by producing more power cleanly and locally. But we want to see rugged and waterproof textile uses for tents and canopies and emergency shelters and sails – consider the possibility of transporting the equivalent of a circus tent to the site of a disaster or power failure – as contrasted to the transportation of heavy petroleum-consuming generators – or solid photovoltaic panels or turbines.

One last thought: Kennedy’s design, we suspect, likely does more than produce energy: it probably acts as a cooling mechanism, preventing or mitigating the effects of a heat emergency.

NanoTechWire has a short interview with Sheila Kennedy here.