Solar Power Helps Cut Diesel and Gas Consumption
Cities Are Using Photocell Generated Energy to Protect Environment
Jun 26, 2009
Solar power is helping cities and public facilities to reduce gasoline and diesel consumption and improve the environment.
- A solar-powered trash compactor is reducing waste pickups.
- Solar-powered bike-rental stations are encouraging cycling and reducing car traffic.
Solar Energy Reduces Trash Pickup
The solar-powered trash receptacles, developed and manufactured by BigBelly Solar, are replacing conventional waste bins on city streets in the U.S., Canada and elsewhere and in public venues such as Fenway Park (Boston Red Sox baseball), Baltimore Inner Harbour and Harvard University.
The City of Philadelphia, designated a Solar America City by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), expects to save nearly (US)$13-million over 10 years by replacing 700 conventional trash receptacles with 500 solar-powered compactors along with receptacles for recyclable items.
When the waste in the receptacle reaches the top, sensors trigger an electric mechanism that compresses the contents into collection bags.
Each receptacle is about the same size as a standard 35-gallon trash barrel. The compression enables it to hold 150 gallons.
When the receptacle is full of compacted waste, a signal is radioed to a truck dispatch center for a pick up.
Benefits of Solar Powered Trash Compaction
- Trucks take only one trip to take to empty receptacles for every five trips for conventional trash cans.
- This reduces fuel consumption, exhaust-emission pollution and wear and tear on the trucks.
- It reduces the need for trucks to compact the waste under diesel engine power.
- The compactors can be installed anywhere and placed temporarily for public events without any need to connect to utility power.
Solar Powered Public Bike Rentals
The City of Montreal has implemented a public bicycle renting system based on solar-powered stations that accept payments and track usage of the bikes. The system assesses use of the bikes so the stations can be strategically placed where usage is high.
Developed by the Public Bike System Company and known as BIXI, for 'BIke taXI', the system has several advantages over earlier public bike-rental schemes, gained largely from its use of solar power.
- The stations draw no power from public utilities.
- With no connection to the power utility, they can be placed anywhere and moved.
- Because they are portable, the stations need no excavation for installation.
- By being positioned where they will be most convenient, they encourage people to use them in place of their cars or public transit.
To get a bike, a rider pays a fee by credit or swipe card at a station that issues an access code used by the rider to release a bike from a locked dock.
The system uses radio-frequency identification (RFID) to track when a bike has been removed. Each dock transmits and receives back a low-power RF signal to read a code in a chip on each bike.
The rider can return the bike to any station, and can enter information to indicate if a bike is damaged. The stations transmit data to a central point for the number of bikes at each location and their functional status, as well as the operation of the solar panels and electronics.
The City of Montreal plans to install 300 stations making 3000 bikes available.
It has been followed by Canada's National Capital Region (Ottawa, Ontario, and Gatineau, Quebec) with a pilot project of four stations and 50 bikes.
An advantage of the portability of the stations for these cities is that they can be easily removed in the winter and installed for summer.
Solar Energy Protects the Environment
These two applications show how solar generated electricity can help the environment in ways over and above the replacement of utility power. They are among recent solar cell innovations and part of a trend towards greater use of alternative energy sources, such as wind power, and towards greater use of technology to reduce air pollution.
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