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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.
Something I've been thinking about lately...
When I was growing up (born in '64), superstition was still pretty widespread in mainstream society, such as rabbit's feet, black cat's crossing your path, "bread and butter", salt over the shoulder, knock on wood, etc. There were people who really took these things seriously: in fact, you might remember a twilight zone episode where some guy speaking about superstition matter-of-factly noted that many people believed in rabbit's feet (and then some guy piped up with "darn right" or something like that).
It occurred to me that these sort of things are almost totally dead, most likely caused by the homogenization of society caused by television and mass media.
Even astrology seems to have taken some big hits. I'm sure there are still some nutcases that follow it, but nothing like it once was.
One superstition, however, seems to be actually gaining prominence: Feng Shui. There are people who actually take it seriously. My wife has a friend (who's Asian) whose mother actually made her not buy a particular condo she was looking at because some Feng Shui witch doctor didn't like it. I've even heard some stories about dot-com idiots in the Silicon Valley who felt the need to blow big $$$ on Feng Shui analyses of their office spaces.
Not sure what the point of all this is, but I found it interesting.
[of course, I'm leaving out religion from this discussion of superstition, but that's another subject entirely. :)]
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
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.