Sanyo Solar Ark and Giant LED Display

shokk writes "Those of us who have played with CrystalFontz and Matrix Orbital serial LCD displays for geeky messaging will get a kick out of the 77k+ LED Solar Ark by Sanyo (only 21k of which are using as red/green/blue combinations for the presentation display). Not only does this behemoth show off its fantastically huge array of solar panels generating 530,000kWh/year and its high efficiency white LED technology, but it also sports a non-chemical water purification system in a very Feng Shui way. Lighting to restrooms underneath is provided by fiber optic paths from the white LEDs in the giant display above." It's a small plant as power plants go (600 kilowatts, when many plants are hundreds or thousands of megawatts) but it was cheap to produce, aesthetically pleasing, and of course, non-polluting, so that Godzilla won't visit.

Comments

Re:So, what is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's an extremely elegant hack.

A photovoltaic collector provides the power to run a system of lights and a water purification system. The lights and water purification system are brought back together to provide a set of clean roadside restrooms. Some of the company's ongoing research (which is normally nothing but a revenue drain until productization occurs) is demonstrated to the public at large in a way that clearly benefits the company.

It is a brilliant, practical, impressive, and functional billboard that meets the needs of travellers, serves the purposes of corporate PR, and extracts the best possible value out of a huge pile of returned surplus PV cells that were returned to them because they didn't put out the advertised power.

Talk about making lemonade outta lemons.

Non polluting? Ahem...

[SysKoll]

Guys, last time I was in a bunny suit (aka clean room jump suit), I was within spitting distance of a lot of extremely nasty chemicals. Sulfuric acid, heavy metals, arsenic, to name only a few.

This web site does not describe the process they used to fabricate the solar cells. If they use the same old cheap process as usual, their cells slowly release arsenic in the environment. In 10 to 15 years, the cells will be too porous to be useful and so worn out they'll have to be scrapped.

Which of course will release all the arsenic still trapped in them.

I really don't know what's this legend about the semicon industry not polluting. Between the huge water use and the nasty chemicals, any semicon plant is a drain on resources. And solar cells release contaminants, so it's not an environmentally acceptable power source either.

Between a nuclear plant and a field of solar cells of the equivalent power, the latter would be by far the worst source of pollution.

-- SysKoll

Re:Speaking of Feng Shui...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Funny all the AC's who freaked out, trying to call me racist and what not - if any of you spas ACs are muslim, then judging from your responses I know more about being a muslim than you do.

First off - no one mentioned trichinosis - the worm that often lives in pig meat and is fatal to humans. If you eat pork with trichina worm that has not been well cooked, you can get infected yourself. That is the reason both Jews and Muslims have a superstition about avoiding pork - because 2000 years ago, give or take, it was real hard to cook pork well enough to kill the worm without making the meat into charcoal in the process. That no longer applies in a 1st or 2nd world country where we have ovens, yet the superstition persists and you get to hear all kinds of rationalization for it about pigs being dirty and what not, even in the face of contradictory evidence - which is a prime characteristic of a superstition.

Second - both pork and lobster, and even shrimp for that matter, are all haram. The only kind of sea food that is halal is that with scales on it, i.e. fish. If you don't have a learned person to ask directly, just whip out google and do a search, it should take you about 30 seconds. There is no halal method of slaughter for any of these animals to prepare them "properly."

Third - pigs are not naturally dirty animals. They seem to tolerate crap pretty well, but they certainly don't go out of their way to live in feces. It is humans, for the most part, that force them to live that way. Wild pigs certainly do not live that way at all - I grew up in an area with enough feral pigs to know that first hand.