Anvartec of Austria developed a handy tool for your mobile phone: SOLight – a digital sun path indicator for your mobile phone.

A great tool for all people visiting a potential site for solar energy installations, and unsure, if any shadowing problems could occur.

SOLight shows you in a simple and quick way the sun paths throughout the whole year.

SOLight calculates the exact sun paths for your current GPS location. The peak (yellow line) and the lowest point (red line) mark the area in which the sun circulates throughout the year.

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Israeli company Innowatech has developed a new alternative energy system that harvests mechanical energy imparted to roadways, railways and runways from passing vehicles, trains and pedestrian traffic and converts it into green electricity. The system, based on a new breed of piezoelectric generators, harvests energy that ordinarily goes to waste and can be installed without changing the habitat.

A very interesting concept. The basis for the system are piezoelectric generators, developed by Innowatch. They have unique abilities to harvest energy from weight, motion, vibration and temperature changes. There are specific generators for roadways, railways, runways and pedestrians.

Want to read more? Visit the
Website of Innowattech

Today´s street lighting infrastructure usually consists of a simple mast plus luminaire with an investment cost of X and yearly operating cost of Y for the next 25 years. Or – in many cases, for even 30 or 40 years.

The Evolution

An evolution of this model is a horizontal PV-panel mounted on top of the mast – enabling the light to produce it´s own energy, stored somewhere in a battery.

Such solar street lights are fairly reliable due to weather uncertainties, potential snow/dust layers on the panels, or insufficient battery capacities.

So, conventional solar street lights are great for the home market, or architectural design projects, but inappropriate for professional street lighting projects.

The Revolution

But look at the Danish company Scotia Light, how they are bringing solar street lighting to a new level by integrating the PV into the mast and enabling 100% availability of solar street lighting!

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