Streetlight Collects Sun Power to Light the Night

[Guest]

Street lamps with solar panels on them already exist, and some of the lamps in my area already detect when someone is nearby. While the `petal` lights may look cool and all, they are too extravagant imho.

 

[dstln]

To conserve power, the lights scale down—or even turn off—when motion sensors determine that nobody is nearby. Will tomorrow's children run around lights at night, having fun with this automatic feature?

imo this isn't a very good feature

 

[zerapio]

[citation][nom]jellico[/nom]Do you realize that carbon is the basis for all known life? Virtually every carbon-based compound is involved in a living process, which is why it is the very basis of ORGANIC chemistry. They whole notion of "carbon emissions" and carbon as a pollutant is pure sophistry. Just saying.[/citation]
Take a look at the temperature distribution of an atmosphere saturated with CO2. Tell me if this is the kind of place you want to live:
http/www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/V/Venusatmos.html (image is in the middle of the page)

 

[husker]

[citation][nom]Article[/nom]The idea is definitely sound, but requires the implementation of "smart" grids to be effective.[/citation]

So is my idea for flying cars, but requires the implementation of "anti-gravity" grids to be effective.

 

[Guest]

I think the idea is sound if some further research was done on alternative approaches.

Motion sensing seems like a catch and miss deal. I could see this feature being sketchy in various weather conditions.

I love the idea of providing the stored power to the electrical grid. Although, it sounds like a major investment. Would the power conservation outrun the costs involved to set it up and maintain it?

The device should be independent, minimal production costs (even if it were a simple design), non-mechanical, maintainence-free, and night-sky friendly.

One suggestion I would like to make is that instead of blinking the light on and off, have it quickly fade-in and slowly fade-out.

 

[Earthworm401]

Lol, I could see bird poop being an issue too.

 

[Earthworm401]

Bird poo could be an issue as well.

 

[Earthworm401]

and bird poo.

 

[Syndil]

I agree that the petals do not need to close. Also, I am concerned with their design in regard to light pollution. They may be pretty, but I do not accept that any outdoor light today can be designed without considering light pollution. I want to see the night sky again.

 

[WheelsOfConfusion]

[citation][nom]jellico[/nom]Do you realize that carbon is the basis for all known life? Virtually every carbon-based compound is involved in a living process, which is why it is the very basis of ORGANIC chemistry. They whole notion of "carbon emissions" and carbon as a pollutant is pure sophistry. Just saying.[/citation]
If you think CO2 isn't a pollutant, try caulking up all the cracks in a phone booth, while you're inside it, and just wait a few hours. I'll even let you bring all the bottled fresh air you want. You'll be in basically the same situation as the crew of Apollo 13 after their accident: you can have enough oxygen to live, but the buildup of CO2 will poison you unless you can rig up a scrubber.

There is more than enough carbon in the biosphere for us to go blissfully about our lives without pumping fossil carbons millions of years old out of their geological lockboxes and into the atmosphere, where it acts as a greenhouse gas and disrupts the climate.

------

Phillips is way behind the game with their artsy-fartsy design. This project uses solar power to charge up a battery that not only lights up the streets at night, but also lets people charge their cell phones (major way to communicate in the developing world, since the cost of wired infrastructure is so great) AND offer a wifi node so that people in developing countries can have safety, power, and communications. They can also be fitted with CC-television systems for public security. But I guess it doesn't look concept-y enough for Phillips to care.

 

[Gin Fushicho]

Why not forget the "smart" systems , and just make it stay on all night like normal street lamps? I mean , it will of had to absorbed plenty of power during the day.

 

[jellico]

[citation][nom]zerapio[/nom]Take a look at the temperature distribution of an atmosphere saturated with CO2. Tell me if this is the kind of place you want to live:http/www.daviddarling.info/encyc [...] atmos.html (image is in the middle of the page)[/citation]

I'm familiar with the atmospheric conditions of Venus. Personally, I tend to think that the extreme heat of the planet is due to the fact that it is about 30 million miles closer to the sun than Earth. I mean, consider that a mere 23.5 degree tilt means the difference between summer and winter conditions here, and you get an idea about just how significant the sun is in that process.


[citation][nom]WheelsOfConfusion[/nom]If you think CO2 isn't a pollutant, try caulking up all the cracks in a phone booth, while you're inside it, and just wait a few hours. I'll even let you bring all the bottled fresh air you want. You'll be in basically the same situation as the crew of Apollo 13 after their accident: you can have enough oxygen to live, but the buildup of CO2 will poison you unless you can rig up a scrubber. *deleted for brevity*[/citation]

Did all of the plants suddenly die and it wasn't reported here on Tom's? Last time I checked, plants thrive on CO2, and there's no shortage of them. Ocean algae contributes significantly to the "scrubbing" of CO2, and the quantities in the oceans are pretty much incalculable.

CO2 isn't the only greenhouse gas, nor is it the most significant one. So why the fixation on carbon?

Finally, this planet has had periods where there was no ice (as recently as about 800,000 - 1,000,000 years ago which is why we can't find ice samples older than that), and it has had periods where the entire surface of the planet was covered in ice. These happened long before we started burning fossil fuels. So why the arrogant presumption that we are causing catestrophic climate change? The infinitely more likely scenario is that our planet's climate is CONSTANTLY changing, and we're just along for the ride.

 

[Row1]

"Smart Grid:" has anyone looked at the wiring and mechanics to have a gizmo add elec to AND subtract elec from the grid depending upon need? That would be twice the cost of the rest of this thingie.

However, products like these are needed to keep Al Gore in business. Al is one of three founders of an investment management firm, worth billions, that helps large investors invest in "green" businesses and markets. Generation Investment Management, LLP.

And you thought he was a selfless humanitarian.


Selling us on the idea of AGW is called "marketing."

 

[invlem]

Granted they probably don't need to close at night, on the otherhand it does look cool, and that's what prototypes are good at, attracting the attention and the cool factor

 

[Platypus]

[citation][nom]jellico[/nom]This kind of thing always sounds cool, but at the end of the day it is little more than a novelty.[/citation]+1 for accidental puns. At the end of the day is when it actually becomes a street lamp!

 

[matt87_50]

wow...

there is a street light outside my house that has been doing this for over a decade... nice of them to finally catch up...

also, its probably better for them to feed into the grid rather than be independent, that way they can offset there energy usage at night by supplying power to houses ect during the day, thus the need for inefficient batteries is removed. of course then they could just ditch the idea of putting the solar cells on the lights to begin with, but then they wouldn't be as cool... but I can understand the practicality of a street light that doesn't need a wire going to it.

also, here's the thing about co2, it is a resource, that costs money to buy, and money to burn, not to mention it may be limited. as Bill Gates said in his TED talk, its not the lack of pollution that will get us using cleaner energy, it is the fact that, once perfected, it should be a lot cheaper, and the lack of dependencies (resource trade ect) will make it more available to everybody (such as the independence of this concept proves). and just look at hybrid cars, most people buy them because they are cheap to run, not because they are trying to "save the planet"

 

[pjmelect]

This is a very bad idea. Solar powered street lights will not save one gram of carbon dioxide and it is a waste of valuable resources that go into making the solar cells. Street lights work at night when demand for electricity is at its lowest, the power stations cannot be shut down and started back up in less than a day so they have to run all of the time all be it at a reduced rate during the night, Street lights provide a load that helps regulate the power stations output and without them some other means would have to be found to provide a load.

 

[WheelsOfConfusion]

[citation][nom]jellico[/nom]I'm familiar with the atmospheric conditions of Venus. Personally, I tend to think that the extreme heat of the planet is due to the fact that it is about 30 million miles closer to the sun than Earth.[/citation]
That's what started the process, yeah. But the CO2 and water vapor as GHGs started a feedback loop, with CO2 trapping more of the sun's heat which evaporated more water which then trapped more of the sun's heat etc. Eventually all the water vapor was split into H2 and O by UV rays from the sun in the upper atmosphere, leaving what we have today: mostly CO2. That's why the temperature on the surface of Venus is hotter than that of Mercury, despite receiving only a quarter of the solar irradiance as that planet.

I mean, consider that a mere 23.5 degree tilt means the difference between summer and winter conditions here, and you get an idea about just how significant the sun is in that process.

The sun is ultimately the most important source of heat for all the inner planets, but the role of atmospheres cannot be underestimated in their climates. As I pointed out above, Venus has an anomalously high temperature given its distance from the sun is twice that of Mercury's. The thick, CO2 atmosphere traps more heat. Now consider that we've increased atmospheric CO2 here on Earth by about a third, or 100ppm, since the industrial revolution.

Did all of the plants suddenly die and it wasn't reported here on Tom's? Last time I checked, plants thrive on CO2, and there's no shortage of them. Ocean algae contributes significantly to the "scrubbing" of CO2, and the quantities in the oceans are pretty much incalculable.

Well first of all, we do have a good idea of how much algae there is in the ocean if you're telling me how much CO2 they scrub. We also owe a lot to tropical rainforests, which are still disappearing quickly and may be adversely affected by significant climate change. If you actually keep plants you know that their growth is always limited by some factor if the necessary ingredients are out of balance. This is especially noticeable in a planted aquarium, where the keeper often has to find the right balance of nutrients, light, and supplemental CO2 to achieve proper growth. Even with all the trace elements and light you can throw at it, some plants simply cannot grow at their maximum potential without CO2: by the same token, extra CO2 will not solve the problem if plants don't have enough nutrients from the soil and water column to use as building blocks. What scientists tend to find when they actually conduct experiments with CO2 enrichment on crops and woodlands is that some plant grow more rapidly, but the food they produce has less nutritional value than the non-enriched controls. Some plants actually become subject to greater pest infestation and damage with extra CO2. More rapid and heavy growth can also deplete the soil of nutrients compared to the non-enriched plants. Besides all of that, a lot of this won't even make it to our crops and forests: CO2 also resides high up in the stratosphere, where it does nothing but trap heat from the sun. You're naive if you think pumping up atmospheric CO2 levels will automatically benefit the plants we depend on.
Since you brought up the subject of how much CO2 goes to plankton, you should also be aware that the seawater itself soaks up CO2 as a natural carbon sink. However, in the process the dissolved CO2 acts as an acid and lowers the pH level of the entire ocean. This makes life more difficult for animals that depend on calcium for their shells and exoskeletons, like corals and mollusks. Meanwhile, an ocean with more carbon in it is less able to soak up atmospheric CO2 rapidly, lessening the effect of the carbon sink and keeping more CO2 in the atmosphere, all the while making the oceans dissolve the "bones" of creatures trying to make a living there. Another attack on the ability of the sea to keep taking our carbon is ... global warming! As the overall average climate gets warmer, the seas get warmer. Warm liquids are less able to hold gases in solution, so just like a cold can of soda versus a warm one, a warm sea is less able to take CO2 out of the atmosphere. But even if you don't buy that our emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels are causing warming (which would put you squarely at odds with about 97% of climate scientists and 80% of scientists generally, just to put the anti-AGW opinion in perspective), ocean acidification is very real and non-controversial.

CO2 isn't the only greenhouse gas, nor is it the most significant one. So why the fixation on carbon?

CO2 is the most significant anthropogenic emission because we emit so much of it (much more than methane) and it sticks around for so much longer. Methane, while more potent, also has a shorter lifetime in the atmosphere (about 8 years) because it easily reacts out into other chemicals. Still, this is not to say we shouldn't start taking steps to reduce our methane emissions, just that right now we need to focus on CO2 because it will still be up there for hundreds of years after it's emitted, and can only accumulate if we keep going as we have. Any other GHG we try to tackle will be in vain if we don't start to cut back on our CO2 emissions, and quickly. Water vapor is not something we can control at all, because its overall concentration is dependent on temperature (a warmer planetary atmosphere causes more evaporation, while a cooler atmosphere causes vapor to precipitate out, ect.). As a result, water vapor can act as a feedback to all the other GHGs we emit, exacerbating the problem. See the Venus situation, though it's unlikely we'd ever get such a runaway feedback loop.

Finally, this planet has had periods where there was no ice (as recently as about 800,000 - 1,000,000 years ago which is why we can't find ice samples older than that), and it has had periods where the entire surface of the planet was covered in ice. These happened long before we started burning fossil fuels.

I realize that, and (hate to tell you) I'm sure most scientists who study climate realize that. Nobody thinks the climate didn't change until humans arrived. What they DO think is happening is that now we're short-circuiting natural climate change by drastically altering the chemistry of the atmosphere and the capacity of the biosphere to soak up our CO2.

So why the arrogant presumption that we are causing catestrophic climate change?

That's where the evidence points. We cannot account for the recent warming trend any other way, except by including the known effects of all those GHG's we're pumping out. The science behind it is relatively solid and was worked out over a century ago: now we're filling in the blanks with decades of research and new understandings of the effects we have on the rest of the environment. As for your "infinitely more likely" scenario, what math have you done to show how likely it really is?

 

[The_Trutherizer]

[citation][nom]jellico[/nom]Do you realize that carbon is the basis for all known life? Virtually every carbon-based compound is involved in a living process, which is why it is the very basis of ORGANIC chemistry. They whole notion of "carbon emissions" and carbon as a pollutant is pure sophistry. Just saying.[/citation]

More is not always better man. You are 'just saying' is pure nonsense. It's like saying good food is needed for good living so wit's no problem to have one's living room filled with cuisine up to waist height. I mean what you are saying is that it would be pure sophistry for somebody to declare that it is a right mess.

 

[jellico]

[citation][nom]WheelsOfConfusion[/nom]CO2 is the most significant anthropogenic emission because we emit so much of it [/citation]
Ah, there's the rub. Anthropogenic, meaning caused by man, is where everyone gets their panties in a twist. Because, somehow we exist outside of the natural ecosystem so anything we do is automatically adverse and extreme.

You go on and on about supposedly established facts. Well, let me give you some.

Fact: We don't know nearly as much as we would like to think that we do.
Evidence: The body of understanding is constantly changing. We regularly hear statements about some new discovery has or will radically (or even subtley) change our understanding about some area of study.

Fact: We can't predict the climate anymore accurately than we can predictly earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, etc.
Evidence: Scientists readily admit we can't predict these events. Yet, somehow, we possess a magical computer programs which allow us to model the climate and make predictions up to 100 years out even though the number of variables involved are far greater than the other events that we can't predict.

Fact: Science is very often co-opted by politics to serve a political end.
Evidence: Governments and the various religious institutions have almost always resisted radical new ideas (such as the earth being round, the earth not being the center of the universe or even the solar system, etc., etc.) and have done so by having their own government scientists and scholars proclaim that their doctrines are based on the work of the best scientists in the world and that they have reached a concensus on that issue (sounds familiar?).

Many years ago, when the most dire predictions of global warming were being presented, I was very concerned. I mean, this is some pretty scary stuff. But I also know the media's propensity towards exaggeration, sensationalism, and apocalypic predictions (one need only recall the army of reporters on the shores of Hawaii following the recent earthquake in Chile). So, I started looking at the data, and more importantly, at the sources of the data. What I found is that the most dire predictions are coming from those who are invested or funded by those with an interest in "carbon credits." Them and the IPCC are simply the modern version of the government scientists insisting the world is, indeed, flat.

The bottom line is this, if you eliminate the opinions of those "scientists" (and considering the fraudulent work recently uncovered by the exposure of emails from the University of East Anglia, this is not unreasonable), and also eliminate the opinions of those who believe that "god wouldn't allow this to happen;" then what you are left with is a bunch of true, unbiased, scientists who have concluded that there simply isn't enough information, one way or the other, to reach any conclusions about anthropogenic climate change. The climate is changing... it's never stopped changing, that's an undeniable fact. But whether or not we are signficantly affecting it is far from established.