Youth Central knew Eden Full back in 2005, when she put a solid 45 hours into imagineCALGARY, a project that helps Calgarians create a sustainable future. Now, at the age of 19, Eden is not just helping Calgarians take care of our planet – she’s helping the world!
Eden recently received second place in Amsterdam’s Postcode Lottery’s Green Challenge, giving her 200,000 euros (roughly $280,000 CDN) to cultivate her invention called the SunSaluter. The SunSaluter is a low-cost non-electrical rotator that optimizes the energy collection of a solar panel by up to 40% every day. In August 2010, Eden installed two SunSaluters in villages in Kenya, which are currently improving the lives of 1,000 Kenyans.
“I built my first solar-powered car when I was nine years old,” Eden said in an interview for the Green Challenge. “I fell in love with the idea of clean technology that was better for our planet. As I grew older, I became frustrated with how solar panels were not optimized to collect their maximum potential. I began building prototypes for different tracking systems and the SunSaluter was born.”
Currently, Eden is taking gap years from her Mechanical Engineering degree at Princeton University and running her company, called Roseicollis Technologies. The grant from the Postcode Lottery Green Challenge will be used to develop the company further – refining the product, establishing a business model and building a team.