Belgrade Hosts First Public Solar-Powered Cell Charging Station

arisvega writes "Dead battery in Belgrade, Serbia? Head to the city's Obrenovac district, where a group of students has developed the world's first public charging station powered entirely by solar energy. Known as the Strawberry Tree, the structure's 16 ports support a variety of handhelds, allowing pedestrians to juice up their handhelds in just ten to 15 minutes, at no charge. Its built-in batteries can also store up to a month's worth of back-up energy, enabling the station to hum along at night, or even during Serbia's less sunny seasons. 'Energy from the sun is free, and it would be unethical to charge people to use the Strawberry Tree...We are trying to inspire young people to think about the source of the energy they use, and behave and act responsibly,' said the inventor Milos Milisavljevic (17 years old when he came up with the idea) and now, at the ripe old age of 22, is looking to plant new stations across other Serbian cities."

Comments

Youth is wasted on the young

[inviolet]

'Energy from the sun is free, and it would be unethical to charge people to use the Strawberry Tree...We are trying to inspire young people to think about the source of the energy they use, and behave and act responsibly,' said the inventor Milos Milisavljevic

If the entire Strawberry Tree installation was free to design, free to build, free to maintain, free to fix after being vandalized, and free of any rents or taxes on the land it stands on . . . then the question of fees would never enter the picture, because Strawberry Trees would already be available everywhere.

Until then, very few moral codes are irrational enough to condemn a fee for services rendered.

Re:Youth is wasted on the young

[Bazar]

And his reason for providing it free is because he considers it unethical to charge for power he collected "free".

I'll also add, doesn't surprise me that its a student spouting such idealism. I expect someone else is footing the bill for parts (the student's university springs to mind).

Its a lot harder to provide the service free when it personally costs you $1500+USD with no return other then a feel good vibe.

Re:Youth is wasted on the young

[Evtim]

Why everything has to be all about money, money, money?

Yhea, it is very insightful to point the obvious - that the installation cost money. "No free lunch" can always get you some mod points. Please, introduce a mod +1 (conforming and mindlessly parroting the existing paradigm)

But you know what - you are surrounded by people giving things for free. Read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy

Some excerpts to sharpen your appetite:

----There are many examples of how a gift economy works in modern culture within a mixed economy, such as marriage, family, friendship, kinship, and social network structures.

-----Traditional scientific research can be thought of as an information gift economy. Scientists produce research papers and give them away through journals and conferences. Other scientists freely refer to such papers. All scientists can therefore benefit from the increased pool of knowledge. The original scientists receive no direct benefit from others building on their work, except an increase in their reputation. Failure to cite and give credit to original authors (thus depriving them of reputational effects) is considered improper behavior.[27]

-----In his essay "Homesteading the Noosphere", noted computer programmer Eric S. Raymond opined that open-source software developers have created "a 'gift culture' in which participants compete for prestige by giving time, energy, and creativity away".[29] Members of the Linux community often speak of their community as a gift economy.[30]

------Millions of articles are available on Wikipedia, a free on-line encyclopedia, and almost none of its innumerable authors and editors receive any direct material reward.[31][32]

Re:Youth is wasted on the young

[gbjbaanb]

Or maybe its because if you charged a fee to use the service, you'd have to increase the price to account for the servicing overhead - either an attendant, or an automated ticket system with cut-off timers and all the associated electronics.

Instead its better to charge once via taxes or grants and then allow useage for free. More people will use it and the cost of providing the service will be much reduced.

Re:Youth is wasted on the young

[antifoidulus]

Unrestricted socialism has been proven not to work as well. While I agree that government should provide for essential services where the private sector is unable or unwilling to offer a cost effective solution(health insurance) or one where the collection of levies would pose undue hardships on the economy(roads, and healthcare again really), the government should NOT be involved in providing luxuries like cell phone charging. Pretty much everyone uses services such as roads, hospitals, fire and police etc. However, only a small portion of the population requires cell phone recharging, so why should everyone be forced to pay for a non-essential item that only a small portion of the population needs? And who in the government gets to decide what luxuries should be funded with tax payer money?

Proponents of unrestricted capitalism have the false belief that unrestricted power in the hands of a few is a good idea, those in favor of unrestricted socialism have the false belief that somehow just because someone works for the government they will automatically be any better than if they were working for themselves. And here is a hint, Hugo Chavez and his ilk are pretty much working for themselves, and only themselves, no matter how much they tell you they aren't. Look at Venezuala's economy ever since Chavez came into power. Despite incredibly high oil prices the economy has actually fallen behind a lot of it's neighbors because Chavez is looting it for his own personal gain. He wants you to think that just because he works for "the people", he actually gives a damn about the people. And with nobody to stand in his way, he can pretty much behave like the capitalists he so decries.

Re:Youth is wasted on the young

[TheRaven64]

His point is not that giving things away is a bad idea, it's that the reasoning behind it is flawed. I have released a lot of code as Free Software, because doing so costs me nothing other than opportunity costs, it serves to advertise my skills to prospective clients, and because I benefit from bug reports and patches if my code has more than one user. Those are sane and rational reasons for giving stuff away. If I said I give it away because ones and zeros are free and so it's unethical to do anything else, then I'd expect people to look at me a bit funny. If I said I gave it away because it benefits others and makes me feel good about myself, I'd also expect that to be considered a valid reason; it's the reason most people give gifts - they enjoy the reaction of the recipient.

Re:Youth is wasted on the young

[nagnamer]

Unrestricted socialist government has been proven not to work as well.

There, FTFY

Re:Youth is wasted on the young

[nagnamer]

If I said I gave it away because it benefits others and makes me feel good about myself, I'd also expect that to be considered a valid reason; it's the reason most people give gifts - they enjoy the reaction of the recipient.

The reason I don't agree with the reason they quote for releasing this product for free is that it's already been paid for by citizens. It wasn't free. It was paid for. So people who paid for it get to use it for free. I'm also glad they provided it for free, because too many things developed at the Belgrade University never gets into public hands despite being funded by the University (and therefore by taxpayer money).

Certainly not first, certainly not 15 minutes, etc

[olden]

Saw a similar, amateur setup in the tiny harbor of my hometown, NeuchÃtel, Switzerland, maybe, huh, 10 years ago?
Unfortunately the 8+ different cellphone charging cables provided weren't rugged enough for an outdoor/public setting, and I suspect that frequent damage is what eventually decided the owner to eventually, er, shall I say, pull the plug.

Also, re charging time: common Li-ion takes 2~3h for a full charge, 15 minutes may be a 80-to-90% top-off...

No kidding

[Sycraft-fu]

Now I should start by saying if they wish to provide this as a free service, I think that is wonderful. I've no objections to people who wish to provide something too people at no cost. If you are willing to eat the costs, time, money, and otherwise, then by all means. Altruism is great.

However his reasoning is extremely stupid. The sun does not charge for its energy, but then neither does any other source. Uranium charges nothing to release the energy it contains in a nuclear reaction. So why then does it cost money? Well because you have to mine that uranium (and by extension build equipment to mine it), refine it (and of course build a facility to refine it), and then have it operated in a proper reactor to turn it in to useful energy (which again you have to build). That the uranium charges nothing to release its energy has no bearing on there being costs to bring it to a useful state.

Same deal with solar. The sun bombards the Earth with electromagnetic radiation of many frequencies all the time, and does so at no cost. However, to do almost anything useful with that energy, you have to construct something. Even if it is as simple as capturing the IR to heat something you are going to need things like lenses, mirrors, insulation, etc.

In this case, of course, you need a bunch of solar panels, batteries, and associated hardware. That is not cheap to make. Solar panels, particularly efficient ones, take a good bit of work to produce and thus have a good bit of costs associated. Now if he wants to eat those costs and provide the service free, good on him. But let's not pretend those costs don't exist.

Solar power is NOT free. We don't want to go down the road where people think "Oh we don't need to put money towards solar/wind/etc because it is free." Hell no, we need to put money towards it. R&D and deployment isn't cheap. If we want it as one of our energy sources we need to be willing to spend money to make it happen.

Heck, money is the one and only reason I don't have solar on my condo. I live in a very sunny area, my association would let me do it, I like the idea, and so on. So why the hell don't I have panels? I can't afford it, that's why. The up front cost is too high. I am not a rich person I can't afford to bear it, even though it would pay for itself in a couple decades most likely.

Re:No kidding

[nagnamer]

Even if everything about the project would be free, it would not be unethical to ask a fee for providing this service. That's just smart business.

It's been paid for by the people with their tax money. So I think it's ok that it's free for the same people to use for free.

Solar Energy is Free so it would be unethical...

[physburn]

Wow at a last a useful link to put on my free energy page.

A capitalist would I think argue with, cost+financing of the solar cells, payment for the workers installing them, plus profit, before setting the price. But even capitalists offer lose leaders for advertising.

But if a urban council, own the land, then they is a strong case for providing useful services free to the public. How often people need public phone charging I don't know. Since mobile have become popular that the public pay phone is an endangered species, so are free charging points needs. Discuss...

---

Free Energy Feed @ Feed Distiller

Re:Yeah right...

[ks9208661]

How will you get a virus by charging your phone?

Re:Baaaaaad idea

[TheRaven64]

I'm sure electricity companies will go bust because people can charge their phones for free just by standing around outside for 15 minutes.

Or, maybe, cafes will start deploying this kind of system. After all, if you have to wait 15 minutes, you may as well have a cup of coffee at the same time. The energy cost is pretty much nothing. My phone's battery is about 5Wh, which at the price I pay for electricity is a tiny fraction of a penny, and would be lost in the noise for a small business.

Re:Yeah right...

[cbope]

Troll.

In case you are just being ignorant, it's widely known that the Free Public WiFi access points you see everywhere are actually due to a quirk in Windows XP's wireless networking pre-SP3. Basically, if XP can't connect to any pre-defined access points, it will automatically create an ad-hoc wireless network with the SSID Free Public WiFi. You can't actually connect to it and you can't browse the net with it. You are actually at no risk if you attempt to connect to one of these, although someone could always set up a dummy network using a real AP with the SSID Free Public WiFi to lure you into connecting, and that could be risky if the owner is up to no good. Note that I have never seen this happen though. If you pay attention when you try to connect to one of these, you will even notice it has a computer icon and not an access point icon (when using Windows that is). This "feature" was fixed in SP3 but since many people do not keep their OS up-to-date, it is still widespread.

Why not ask for donations so more can be build?

[bre_dnd]

The service is worth something to me, running out of power on your phone while on the go is annoying, so I wouldn't mind paying a small amount for it. Why not add a cashbox to it -- if you like the charging tree and appreciate the service, please leave a donation so we can build more.

There's no problem with it being free -- but this would be a way to make the idea spread. Some of the components will cost money to buy, some of the installation work might need to be done by a qualified installer / builder. If the first one allows you to keep some cash, it can be reinvested -- more can follow and more people would be able to enjoy the service.

Re:Yeah right...

[cbope]

Many recent phones charge via their mini/micro USB sockets, so it is a risk. How do you know that the other end of the cable is connected only to power and not to a PC/laptop, up to no good?

Re:Riverworld

[nagnamer]

Can this technology be applied to food, please? using a 3D printer, maybe.

If you want to eat paper, glue, and some coloring agent, sure.

at "no charge"!

[martas]

Get it, "no charge"! Sorry...

Re:Yeah right...

[ks9208661]

I will know if the other end of the cable is connected to a PC/laptop if get this popup window asking whether to just charge my device only, or to do some sort of sharing. Default setting is "charge only". At least this is how my old Symbian-based and my current Android-based smartphone behave. I haven't heard of a case yet where this was circumvented.

Did he say it was free?

[hraponssi]

It seems to me that he claims that "'Energy from the sun is free" not that the station is free. Now maybe he just makes it free as he says he wants to inspire people and had some public funding to pay for this piece. Where does the angst against the word "free" come from here? Peace, love and understanding, dude :)

Internet café

[Errol backfiring]

Some internet cafés already do this. There is an internet connection and a wall socket. And coffee and good company.