Industrial designer Edan Kurzweil has created a street lighting system called the Night Owl – powered with solar technology. Edan also created a parking meter powered on the same basic technology – because, you know, what fun would a world be without solar parking meters? We can feed the meter while the sun is feeding the meter!
(oh, that was shameful)
But anyway – the Night Owl system contains high output LEDs powered by flexible solar polymer films mounted on top of the units, both street/path light and parking meter units. The Night Owls would also be wired into the city’s grid to feed any unused or excess power back into the city’s power distribution system – but this is probably dependent on that city having the Smart Grid type technology developed and installed. To cut down on debris and dirt accumulation, the Night owls are all enclosed in a sphere made of a polymer of some sort. This would hopefully cut down on maintenance costs.
Check out Edan Kurzweil’s portfolio over at Coroflot. I’ve also included some images below – I don’t have one of me forgetting to feed the Night Owl meter while I’m downtown at a pub, but give it time. If the Night owl meters show up, I’ll be sure to forget to feed one.
Thanks, EcoGadgets!
