The “Little Box Challenge” was set up as an ‘x-prize’ type contest by Google to encourage innovation in power inverters - the component of electrical systems that allows (amongst other things) solar photovoltaic panels to channel the energy they harvest from sunshine as direct current into the electrical grid’s alternating current.
Inverters tend to be bulky - the challenge was focussed on approaches to shrink them down to the size of a tablet computer or smaller - rather than the ‘picnic cooler’ volumes of most current commercial offerings.
Shrinking power inverters in size and price is a vital step in making Solar power widespread. This campaign and competition hoped to play a part in just that.
The original website is no longer online but there is an archived copy.
Team: Adam Katz, Christine Lindemann, Alison Lentz
