Light is one of the major power consumers for any home or business. With more and more people lighting homes around the world the amount of power being consumed is increasing. At one point it may outpace the consumable resources on this planet and with more and more people moving to urban environments the need is accelerating. This could be a bleak future but scientists are working to change that and it could start with your landscape.
Solar power is the key
Efforts to make renewable energy more mainstream is not new and more and more people are coming on board with it. Solar panels are finding their way into more and more homes providing power not only for those homes but for others as well. Tech firms are working at other ways to harvest solar energy and your landscape will play a role in that.
The vision of many technology companies and of environmentalists are that one day solar power and excess energy from vehicles will be harvested by the pavement or by concrete. Lamp posts will be able to absorb solar power during the day and will become batteries at night providing power to not only themselves but to their surroundings as well. The key to this will be storing power in concrete.
Using your sidewalk as a battery?
Potassium geo-polymeric composites are already able to store and deliver electricity. A lamp post could be made of this material with a solar panel placed on top to absorb energy. As solar panels get cheaper and more efficient this will make the potential for this even greater.
Constructing a solar panel is energy intensive as the silicon used to make it needs to be 99.999% pure and requires temperatures over 2500° Fahrenheit to make. A new material called perovskites can be used and the panels can be thinner and require a lower temperature to construct, dropping the costs significantly. The material is also transparent so their use for windows is under consideration. The only downside is that lead is one of the materials used to make it but scientists are exploring alternative materials.
Starting with street lights
This would be something that starts with urban outdoor lighting and as the technology improves would become small enough and unobtrusive enough to be brought to the individual home. Imagine your own concrete walkway, sidewalk or driveway being able to store enough electricity to not only power your landscape lighting system but also part of your home.
Solar powered roads too?
That is not the only potential future source of energy. In 2016 in the Normandy, France village of Tourouvre-au-Perche .6 miles of photovoltaic road was installed amid great fanfare. This road harvests energy from cars that drive over it and from the sun through solar panels installed on top of the road which are protected by a sheet of resin. It is estimated that 2,000 cars per day will drive over the road and it was tested to see if enough electricity could be generated to power the village of 3,400’s street lights. (Why the government chose a village in Normandy which gets about 44 days of complete sunshine instead of a village in the south of France which is much sunnier is up for debate) In 2014 in Amsterdam a similar design was used for a 70 meter bicycle path. When cars or bikes drive overtop of these the quartz in them is squeezed producing electricity. China has also thrown its hat into the ring.
So far this technology has been proven to be feasible but has not been accepted. The main reason is the price tag. The bicycle path cost about $3.4 million and the road in Normandy cost about $5.6 million dollars. The amount electricity generated has been nowhere near enough to offset the costs. In Amsterdam the path generated enough electricity to power one home for a year. The return on investment in France was not much better but that has not stopped the government from authorizing 600 miles of road to be repaved as solar roads over the next five years. It is hoped that they will be able to supply power to 5 million people.
In the near future the landscape around your home could produce all of the energy you need. Solar panels could harvest energy storing it in your walkway or your driveway, supplemented by cars driving down your street or eventually even people walking. This will provide enough power for your home and your landscape lighting system giving you and hopefully every American energy independence. It may be awhile yet but it could change the lighting industry as we know it.
References:
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46064166
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/22/solar-panel-road-tourouvre-au-perche-normandy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourouvre_au_Perche
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/france-paving-more-600-miles-road-solar-panels-180958035/
