Playful, Bovine-divined Solar Panel Cultivates Energy from the Sun while Serving up Social Change

The practical objet d’art comes with a solar panel shaped like a cheese plate and solar powered accessories: a brie cheese USB port and customized power bank connector, a milk bottle power bank, a swiss cheese radio, a ricotta lantern, and a caciocavallo plasma lighter. The cheese plate collects energy from the sun and stores it in the milk bottle power bank.  Embedded magnets and customized connectors attach the milk bottle to each of the cheeses and bring them to life.

YOLK created a playful, functional, and high-brow project that combines the utility of solar panels with one of their favorite bovine-divined products, cheese.  SunMade Cheese is more than just a solar panel. It hosts a potpourri of realistic cheeses designed to practically and easily incorporate solar power into our everyday lives.

These highly cultured accessories include:

• Swiss Note Speaker: Perfectly disguised as a block of swiss, the bluetooth Swiss Note speaker’s volume control and radio seek buttons are embedded within the eyes.
• Ricotta Torch: With the texture and appearance of ricotta salata, this cheese module transforms into a traditional flashlight or lantern. Smart sensors detect when the torch is set down on its rim and automatically switch the light to diffuse softly up through the handle.
• Caciocavallo Kindler: This version of caciocavallo – an Italian delicacy – provides futuristic flames as a plasma lighter. Plasma lighters are 100% sustainable, wind-proof, odorless, flameless, and 100% rechargeable, so the Caciocavallo Kindler never needs lighter fuel and never blows out.
• Milk Bottle Power Bank: The cheese plate collects energy from the sun and stores it in the transparent Milk Bottle Power Bank. The power bank can store up to 2900mAh of power. Unlike other power banks, it features an on-off switch that prevents it from leaking energy when not in use.

Available now on Kickstarter, SunMade Cheese is guaranteed to start conversations about the importance of solar power and energy conservation no matter where you display it. One of YOLK’s core values is “Solar for Everyone”. In line with that philosophy, the team prepared for this project by delivering and installing a Solar Cow at an elementary school in Pokot, Kenya and gave 30 power banks to the students. In Sub-Saharan Africa child labor prevents one in five children from attending school. That’s twice the global average. The Solar Cow is devised as a way to reward children for going to school and their parents for sending them. When kids arrive at school in the morning they just attach their batteries where the cow’s udders would be. At the end of the school day they can leave with a full supply of valuable electricity. Ten percent of revenue from the SunMade Cheese project will go towards funding Solar Cow projects in rural African communities.