Highway turbulence wasted?

http://green.autoblog.com/2007/05/01/highway-wind-turbines-to-capture-energy-from-passing-vehicles/

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                Harvesting Highway Turbulence and the Opportunity to Conserve

“By acting now, future generations may be more apt to applaud our efforts to shape an innovative and secure energy economy than to criticize our unwillingness to change.”

                                                       Joshua Prok, Interstate Wind: Using New Technology to Enhance 2008

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Smart interstate highway infrastructure. Are we putting provisions into our roads and highways that could support our (common wealth) basic needs? Provide jobs locally? Where future nano tech /micro generators can harvest highway turbulence (Parasitic Catalyst) and generate electricity on-demand to neighborhoods where they serve now and in the future?

If we take the bad with the good, does that mean when residents tolerate the drone of traffic, they can take satisfaction knowing that same buzz is responsible for a sizable offset on their electrical bill? Or communities reap big benefits in leasing out these distributed-dynamos to large conglomerates in congested metropolitan areas. Not to mention the impact telemetry and web-centric services embedded into roads would have in preparing for disasters or support emergency communications in times of crisis? 

LED on the street

Proposal for case study

LED for street lighting

The Agriculture Museum has a new LED street light with a stand-alone solar power station for lighting the corner of a remote intersection in Flagler County, Florida. According to local authority, the expense of installing street lights by the local utility made the selection of a self-sustaining station and natural choice.

Further, it is the focus of this discussion as to what are the current barriers that prevent the marketplace from promoting solutions like this so that the advantage bulk purchasing power and economies of scale determine alternative energy penetration into the market share.

According to a local expert, the insurance industry limits the utility company as to what devices are suitable in the application of street lighting. It’s the quality and integrity of the light radiation or emission that determines the viability of a product for public safety and use. Simply put, the current LED beam patterns illuminating an area are not considered adequate as defined by regulatory mandate.

Is it really that critical to public safety? Or is it a matter of technology and information advancing quicker than public policy.

According to another embedded stakeholder “There is a chance that the current legislation and insurance guidelines do not touch on these emerging technologies and make it a barrier for this kind of enterprise. It’s a matter of public policy lagging the pace of technology.”

So without catalysis this transition has stalled? What does it take to change public policy so that this venture is suitable? If you take the federal or state regulatory element from this equation, its obvious LED lighting is a no-nonsense solution to energy conservation.

I spoke with an associate of a popular surf shop in on a recent trip to Florida Solar Energy Center in world famous Cocoa Beach. She told me their outfit has retrofitted their operations outside lighting with LED.

The quest at this point is to:

1.       Identify the legislative constraint or code that may be the root of this barrier.

a.       Maybe speak with someone in South Daytona about their new acquisition of their FPL region and see what they know about this prospect.

b.      Ask key members about this topic.

2.       Better understand what the smart grid is and whether secondary passive power generation features are planned for and being implemented during repair or replacement in the future.

Backup for PEP stations candidate for improvement

Pretreatment Effluent Pumping System or PEP systems are a prime candidate for micro-grid applications. As part of the Freaky Eden mentality, why would the City of Palm Coast not want to take the first leap into the smart grid frontier and find some tax incentives or other means for rural grant funding to begin the planning of standalone, micro-grid infrastructure with evident value during disaster or hurricane? These standalone stations can eventually be integrated into distribution points to create a redundant electrical microcosm throughout vulnerable neighborhoods.