Photos: World's most efficient solar dish?

Sze, who just graduated from MIT's Sloan School of Management, holds a mirror panel, while Olin College student Matt Ritter (left) fastens it in place.

"I've looked for years at a variety of solar approaches, and this is the cheapest I've seen. And the key thing in scaling it globally is that all of the materials are inexpensive and accessible anywhere in the world," said Sloan lecturer David Pelly, in whose class this project first took shape last fall. "I've looked all over for solar technology that could scale without subsidies. Almost nothing I've looked at has that potential. This does."

Photo by David Chandler/MIT

Caption by Zoë Slocum