Recently a hot topic: Smart Grids - using energy with intelligence - storing and conserving it, "banking" it, instead of sending excess supplies into the ground, as seems to be the current practice.
Recently a New York architect offered an example of the kind of thinking that goes this way:
New York City has a lot of kids and precious few places where they can play outdoors and actually be kids (unless they're in private school!). New York architect Andrew Burdick's solution: Instead of building new fields, which would sap major time and money, extend the number of hours existing ones can be used.
To do that, Burdick, a finalist in the Philips Livable Cities Awardsand a staffer at Ennead Architects (formerly Polshek Partnership), proposes throwing up “smart-grid” solar- and wind-powered LED lights that'd allow kids and recreational sports teams to play in a safely lit space well into the night.. . .
Most field lights are huge purse and energy drains, so cities have little incentive to switch them on past dusk. Burdick's antenna-like fixtures include wind turbines and solar arrays that would feed energy to the grid during the day. At night, the fixtures would draw power directly from the grid, but because they're LEDs, they'd suck less juice than your average field light (often metal halide). All told, Burdick reckons that the lights would generate more power than they consume, resulting in a net gain for the city.
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