Chaptzem Blog!      

Have the end of the Jewish holidays, return to work, and impending cold weather got you down? Fantasizing about next year’s warm evenings spent inside an outdoor sukkah (or temporary booth) might help fight that feeling. This year’s much-publicized Sukkah City design competition in New York’s Union Square might have inspired you to go above and beyond the call of sukkah duty next year and bring some serious design quality to your booth.

In the spirit of the temporary, outdoor sukkah bringing you into closer contact with nature, how about making it super sustainable as well?

“Solar Schach” (the panels of which you can see in the photo above) is a specially engineered sukkah covering made out of the multi-purpose eco material, bamboo. The particular bamboo hybrid used to make the Solar Schach, Bamboo2, contains photovoltaic cells that enable it to produce electricity.

So since the Solar Schach is both a plant material (and therefore kosher to be used as a sukkah covering) and in perfect position to collect solar power since it is positioned on the booth’s roof – it is sure to have your neighbors talking. Supposedly, Solar Schach is strong enough to produce enough energy to power the nighttime lighting of a 10×10 sukkah AND have enough to power cell phones and other small gadgets.

http://www.greenprophet.com/2010/10/sukkah-hybrid-bamboo-solar/