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Whenever it comes to green technology, the headlines are always grabbed by the more ‘conventional’ renewable sources of energy like wind and sun. Of course, statistically speaking, such forms of energy contribute to more than 18 percent of total electricity generation in the whole wide world. But that does not necessarily mean that green technology cannot evolve beyond the ever expanding scope set by these popular renewable systems. In relation to this, Dallas based industrial design and interaction firm Dido Studio has unveiled their plan for a novel yet sustainable lighting mechanism, which has the potentiality to exceed the seemingly set ambit in environment friendly technology.
Christened as the ENERGYME, this lighting fixture will basically incorporate an artistically conceived LED street lamp. But beyond the appeal of pure aesthetics, it is the intrinsic mechanism (to power the lamp) that scores high on ingeniousness in our book. This is because the designers have envisaged a system where the fixtures will be powered by the kinetic energy, which is one of the basic physical quantities omnipresent in our everyday life. Since, this very form of energy is governed by the magnitude of pure motion (kinetic energy is the energy possessed by any body, by virtue of its motion), there is no scope for any carbon emission or related pollution in the whole scheme. Thus, it can be considered (at least from the perspective of physics) as one of the cleanest and ‘greenest’ form of energy available to us.
ENERGYMELed Street Lamp
The innovative side of the intriguing project is not just limited by the usage of clean energy, but also related to its source of production. In this respect, the designers have thought of a collective self sustaining system which would involve the people directly using the street lamps. Now, you may ask how? Well, the lamp fixtures will also double up as exercising facilities for people. So, while taking their daily evening walk, one could just as easily use one of these fitness systems for his / her workout session. Theoretically, the workout procedure (by movement of handle bars) will produce that required magnitude of motion (and thus, kinetic energy), which in turn will be stored inside the fixture mechanism and then converted into electrical energy for the final effect – that is lighting. So, in simpler terms, the human ‘biological’ energy (in terms of calories) will finally and fascinatingly be converted to clean and green electricity.
Coming to the lighting type, the designers have thought of using light emitting diodes (or better known as LEDs). Now, these semiconductor light sources have numerous advantages over conventional lighting systems. Firstly, they utilize the effect of electro-luminescence, which is directly related to the ability of free electrons to combine with ‘electron holes’ within the LED device to release photons (light particles). This phenomenon allows LEDs to be ubiquitously small in size, often less than 1 sq mm. Moreover, as compared to incandescent light sources, LEDs require lesser energy consumption and generally have longer lifetime with equal measure of hardiness.
Source: ecofriend
