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Environment

Sin City going green: Las Vegas to use solar and pedestrian power for street lights

March 10, 2016
Sin City going green: Las Vegas to use solar and pedestrian power for street lights
Each time a person steps on a kinetic tile, up to 7 W of power is generated for the EnGoPLANET Street Light
Each time a person steps on a kinetic tile, up to 7 W of power is generated for the EnGoPLANET Street Light
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Each time a person steps on a kinetic tile, up to 7 W of power is generated for the EnGoPLANET Street Light
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Each time a person steps on a kinetic tile, up to 7 W of power is generated for the EnGoPLANET Street Light
EnGoPLANET Street Lights can have benches and charge spots for places to sit and power devices via USB or wireless pad
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EnGoPLANET Street Lights can have benches and charge spots for places to sit and power devices via USB or wireless pad
Optional features help to transform the EnGoPLANET Street Light into smart tech for cities
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Optional features help to transform the EnGoPLANET Street Light into smart tech for cities
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Cities consume a considerable amount of energy per year on lighting. And if that city happens to be Las Vegas, you can expect the bill to be a doozy. But a recently announced partnership with a New York City-based start-up is set to bolster Las Vegas' commitment to renewable energy sources. Soon enough, some of "Sin City's" sidewalks will be illuminated by EnGoPLANET's innovative sun- and people-powered street lights.

EnGoPLANET focuses on developing off-the-grid solutions and infrastructure to harvest energy from alternative sources. Installations of EnGoPLANET's latest, the Street Light, is expected to be a first-ever for the company. Together with the city of Las Vegas, the solar-kinetic lights will be placed throughout Boulder Plaza. Not only are these street lights designed to be powered by the sun, but footsteps of passing pedestrians will help keep them illuminated all through the night.

EnGoPLANET Street Lights can have benches and charge spots for places to sit and power devices via USB or wireless pad
EnGoPLANET Street Lights can have benches and charge spots for places to sit and power devices via USB or wireless pad

EnGoPLANET Street Lights can be connected to durable, strategically-placed kinetic energy tiles that are designed to turn motion into useful energy. Each time someone steps on one of these pads, up to 7 W of power is created and then stored in a battery for later use. The lights are equipped with the latest LED technology, ranging from 25 to 75 W depending on the chosen design. Motion sensors can be incorporated so that the lights illuminate only as-needed, thus potentially reducing the amount of energy waste.

Optional features help to transform the EnGoPLANET Street Light into smart tech for cities. Additional sensors measure air quality, temperature, humidity, and water, as video surveillance cameras monitor and analyze traffic. Similar to the Bigbelly solar-powered recycling/garbage bin, built-in Wi-Fi transmits real-time data while doubling as a hot spot for mobile devices. Benches and EnGo Charge Spots can be provided so that people have a place to sit and charge devices via USB or wireless pad.

"If you look at traditional street light poles, you will see that they are useless. They simply hold the lighting," says Petar Mirovic, CEO of EnGoPLANET. "With our solution, we've changed that by incorporating useful features into the pole and transforming it into a free service spot where people can rest, charge their portable devices, or connect to Wi-Fi."

Check out the video below for an overview of the EnGoPLANET Street Light.

Source: EnGoPLANET via Inhabitat
EnGoPLANET STREET LIGHT

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Craig Jennings
Dreadful over complication. Street lighting is in grids (like the roads) and is easily planned. Therefore easily centralized for power etc, so why you'd need batteries everywhere and the the controllers and reinforcement/complexity of the structure you could throw up a simple light, add what gizmos you wanted to it and connect it to a proper solar complex. But I suppose you wouldn't have the feel good factor of seeing solar panels all down your streets....
Daishi
Solar panels have gotten so cheap and LED's are efficient enough that the "generating power from people walking" part seems like a pointless expensive gimmick that is a nearly unnecessary part of the design. All those little power generating pressure plates would wear out or require maintenance.
It's like they took a simple inexpensive problem and made it expensive and complex on purpose. The construction cost of redoing all the sidewalks to add these sections of pressure plates alone is more than the entire project should cost. I use $16 solar motion lights on my garage.
This is a larger scale but only slightly. But instead of just going with lights they had to include the kitchen sink with it but is the company that makes the poles the same one that will be providing WiFi service?
It seems like it would make more sense to just offer power/cabling/mounting to other existing companies that already offer WiFi service. The greenest thing in this project is the massive pile of money getting paid to the company and the contractors tearing up all the sidewalks for the install.
It legitimately looks like they went out of their way to make it as complex and expensive as possible.
TomSpradley
Is the lighting night sky friendly? Blue LED light blots out the sky. If the LEDs are not shielded with full cut off shades then light escapes into the sky and energy is wasted and the night sky of stars and planets blotted out. Why is it lighting engineers never take this into consideration. Give us back our night sky and forget about charging phones.
Lbrewer42
Once again we try to market with the falsheood, and scientifically false idea of CO2 emissions being bad.
The sicence is that CO2 does NOT hold in heat. Look it up.
CO2 is not added to greenhouses to make them warmer since CO2 does NOT hold in heat! Any CO2 in a greenhouse is only from the environment - NOT ADDED - and the plants use up what is in the greenhouse through photosynthesis. SO what keeps in the heat? Water Vapor! But how could they get the public to swallow we need to pay for vehicle emissions testing b/c of water vapor?
So now we have a more expensive and unneeded solution that looks good on paper - is helped to market with the global warming panic - and we get the politically correct to be happy.
YouAre
I'm sure Gizmag will introduce a then-novel-feature of “Like”/”Dislike” sometime in the 2030s. In the meantime the Daishi's post gets a "Like" from me.
Grainpaw
Glass or plastic holds the heat in a greenhouse just as it does in a car parked in sunlight. The term greenhouse is an analogy to help people understand the concept, though it fails with those who are determined not to understand. We can't control water vapor, but we can do something about some sources of the other gases. CO2 is sometimes added to greenhouse air to enhance the growth of a high=value crop. Water is applied to plants to keep them alive. High humidity in a greenhouse is generally undesirable because it could promote pathogens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas Greenhouse gases are those that absorb and emit infrared radiation in the wavelength range emitted by Earth.[1] In order, the most abundant greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere are:
Water vapor (H2O) Carbon dioxide (CO2) Methane (CH4) Nitrous oxide (N2O) Ozone (O3) Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)