With an Eye Toward Disaster, NYC Debuts Solar Charging Stations

Nerval's Lobster writes "When hurricane Sandy pummeled New York City last fall, it left a sizable percentage of the metropolis without electricity. Residents had trouble keeping their phones and tablets charged, and often walked across whole neighborhoods to reach zones with power. Come the next disaster, at least a few citizens could communicate a little easier thanks to 25 solar-powered charging stations going up around the city. The stations—known as 'Street Charge' — are the result of a partnership between AT&T, Brooklyn design studio Pensa, and portable solar-power maker Goal Zero (with approval by the city's Parks Department). The first unit will deploy in Brooklyn's Fort Green Park on June 18, followed in short order by others in Union Square, Central Park, the Rockaways, and other locations. Each station incorporates lithium-ion batteries in addition to solar panels; charging a phone to full capacity could take as long as two hours, but the time necessary for a partial charge is much shorter. But a couple of charging stations also won't help very much if half the city is without power: In order to help mitigate the effects of the next hurricane, New York City major Michael Bloomberg has put forward a $20 billion plan for seawalls, levees, and dozens of other improvements. 'Sandy exposed weaknesses in the city's telecommunications infrastructure — including the location of critical facilities in areas that are susceptible to flooding,' reads one section of the plan's accompanying report. The city will harden the system 'by increasing the accountability of telecommunications providers to invest in resiliency and by using new regulatory authority to enable rapid recovery after extreme weather events.'"

Comments

Fee to use?

[danomac]

Is there a charge to use it?

If there isn't I can see it being abused by people.

Re:Fee to use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Saw one of these today, they were free. They seemed to have IPhone plugs and usb slots (you'd have to bring your own charger cable for micro-usb), but they did look kinda cool, kinda blended in with the park and didn't take up much space.

Re:Fee to use?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Is there a charge to use it?

If there isn't I can see it being abused by people.

I suspect that the inconvenience offers a built-in deterrent. To use one, you have to plug something into it, and the design offers no means of securing a device(as the pay-charge stations often do, in the form of little 'lockers' or similar that will hold a cellphone until you return).

How long are you going to stand around babysitting your phone in exchange for a few watts of free electricity? It's a convenient thing to have if you are taking a walk and need to top up your phone; but that's a pretty lousy hourly rate.

Aside from pure vandalism, which is possible; but wouldn't be deterred by fees, the only potentially sticky use case I can see would be the homeless. They have the fewest other options, and comparatively low opportunity costs for being near one of these as opposed to elsewhere. I suppose we'll see what team NYPD decides to do if they show up...

Re:Fee to use?

[hawguy]

How many riots broke out around gas stations after Sandy? New Yorkers seemed to keep it pretty much together.

A gas station has a well defined queue (i.e. the road), an attendant that works there, and people in general are waiting in their cars, separated from each other.

When hundreds of people crowd around a 4 phone charge station with no obvious queuing order, there's going to much more chance for tempers to flare "Hey! Why are you charging an iPad? You just want to play games but I need to charge my phone to call my mother!" or "Hey, you've been here for an hour already, why don't you unplug and let someone else charge for a while!?"

Re:Fee to use?

[AmiMoJo]

Easy to solve. Have the chargers put out say 500mAh of charge and then cut off, indicating that it's the next person's turn to get an emergency charge. Not enough energy to run an iPad for very long but it will allow a phone to make a few calls.

Re:Fee to use?

[hawguy]

Have a lot of riots broken out around park benches recently? How many people get punched in the face for sitting on a bench reading a newspaper too long on a crowded morning? Folks generally manage to not go berserk over lack of access to other first-come, first-serve public accommodations; what's so special about these phone charging stations? Anyone on the verge of punching someone over charging time (that they could get at home, work, or a cafe) is likely going to find some other reason to punch someone anyway.

I was talking more about a disaster situation where hundreds of people will want to charge their phones at a charge station that takes 2 hours to charge 4 phones (or whatever).

I have seen a fight (or at least yelling and pushing) for a public bench at a concert at a public park were there was a dispute over who was "hovering" over the bench the longest and who was "entitled" to use the bench as the current occupants left the bench.

Re:Fee to use?

[femtobyte]

For actual disaster scenarios, there is abundant evidence that ad-hoc groups of strangers often cooperatively self-organize moderately effectively rather than degenerate into massive murderous brawls. There have been lots of disasters that cast groups of hundreds to thousands of people into resource-limited refugee situations; these rarely turn into bloodbath riots --- typically, you'll see far more efficient and egalitarian distribution of resources (regardless of race/gender/socioeconomic status) than you're likely to encounter in "normal" society. You'll always have a few especially obnoxious assholes, but they rarely succeed in much more than turning the crowds' antipathy towards themselves. Rude, self-entitled behavior is far more likely to be tolerated over "frivolous" resources like a concert ticket than over food, water, shelter, and communications in an emergency with a crowd of strangers.

Re:Fee to use?

[hawguy]

For actual disaster scenarios, there is abundant evidence that ad-hoc groups of strangers often cooperatively self-organize moderately effectively rather than degenerate into massive murderous brawls. There have been lots of disasters that cast groups of hundreds to thousands of people into resource-limited refugee situations; these rarely turn into bloodbath riots --- typically, you'll see far more efficient and egalitarian distribution of resources (regardless of race/gender/socioeconomic status) than you're likely to encounter in "normal" society. You'll always have a few especially obnoxious assholes, but they rarely succeed in much more than turning the crowds' antipathy towards themselves. Rude, self-entitled behavior is far more likely to be tolerated over "frivolous" resources like a concert ticket than over food, water, shelter, and communications in an emergency with a crowd of strangers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_Hurricane_Katrina_in_New_Orleans#Civil_disturbances
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/31/hurricane-sandy-looting-brooklyn-coney-island_n_2047183.html

Which big disasters in the USA *didn't* result in looting and other public disturbances?

Re:Fee to use?

[Goaway]

You'd do well to ensure you are not yourself being whooshed, before rushing to claim others are.

Disaster to the Station

[Agent0013]

And why do we assume that these solar panel charging stations will still be working in the advent of a disaster? Rain and flooding can short out the batteries. Wind and falling branches can destroy the solar panels. I guess the fact that each is independant will mean that hopefully some of them survived the storm. But it seems to me that rather than spending the money on these storm proof kiosks you could strengthen the infrastructure. So you can charge your iPad, but you have no lights or heat at home, great improvement!

Re:Disaster to the Station

[AmiMoJo]

So you can charge your iPad, but you have no lights or heat at home, great improvement!

Just download a flashlight and real wood fireplace app. Duh.

I dunno, Fred

[ackthpt]

Seems to me all the disaster film (real and otherwise) I see shows dark, dark clouds over Manhattan.

Re:I dunno, Fred

[girlintraining]

Seems to me all the disaster film (real and otherwise) I see shows dark, dark clouds over Manhattan.

Yup. From the city that brought you a ban on large fountain sodas to combat obesity comes solar panels to combat storms. o_O

Yay, my cell phone's charged

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Now if only the cell towers had power...

Bzzzzt. Wrong Answer

[tekrat]

Bull. In the Northeast, 24 hours after any hurricane, it's bright and clear like nothing happened. Secondly, most solar panels I've worked with still produce power even on cloudy days, they just aren't producing as much power as they could be (most engineers take this into account). PSE&G in NJ has invested a ton of money in solar, and yes, we're in the Northeast, which is cloudy 50% of the year!

Re:big trucks

[icebike]

But even Macs shut off, even if Mac users never shut up.

Re:Do not rely on this for disaster preparedness.

[icebike]

you should not rely on stuff you don't own that may not work and may be in use by 7,000,000 other people.

So why bother with all those batteries then? After all, those cell towers that you don't own won't necessarily be working either.
And those same 7 million people will be contending for them as well.

You can not live in a large city AND adopt a dooms-day prepper mentality. It makes no sense.
By all means spend the money for an external battery, but sooner or later even THAT will be exhausted.
Some Sandy victims were out of power for many weeks.

Just get one of these.

[asm2750]

If you need power for your cellphone that bad get one of these http://solarjoos.com/ or one of these http://mylimeade.com/