From Guest Blogger Sinan: Solar Benches in Boston
The 60-year-old technology is finally making into the mainstream of our daily lives. The city of Boston plans to install solar photovoltaic powered benches that would serve as outdoor charging stations. The first wave will be located in the Boston Common and the Rose Kennedy Greenway.
According to Marketwatch, a subsidiary of the Dow Jones, each bench will cost about $3000 and will be covered by Cisco Systems Inc. Each unit comes equipped with a built-in solar panel and two USB ports, which would allow users to charge their phones and connect to WiFi.
New York could soon be next. This could be revolutionary for the role that solar plays in our society. For the most part, solar projects have been associated with electricity generation for homes and offices and the idea of solar generated electricity is nothing new. Furthermore, solar panel technology has come a long way: both large and small-scaled solar power projects have sprung across the globe over the past decade.
While the solar bench technology is not revolutionary and it might not alleviate global warming and reduce carbon emissions, the integration of this product into our daily lives could be an inflection point in terms of how we perceive solar power and how we can improve our ways to use it. “Everyone” has a mobile phone, and now one can sit on a park bench charging the phone and surf the web at the same time thanks to these smart benches.
Solar power is no longer just about harnessing energy and generating clean electricity on a grand scale. Small solar projects such as a solar bench can be just as life changing as a solar farm if applied the right way. And as result of that, more and more people will come to appreciate solar and for its uses.
$3000!
I could do the same for ~$20. It would require an extension cord.
It’s absolutely nuts to consider $3000 for a phone charging station to be something worth celebrating. The left MUST get past the whole OIMBYism (Only In My BackYard) thing when it comes to environmental solutions.
Boston is a horrible place for solar energy. It’s far North, it’s got plenty of cloudy/rainy days, and the tall buildings and tree-lined greenspaces provide lots and lots of shade.
Furthermore, there is very little coal in the mix in the Northeast, as there’s a huge amount of hydropower and the rest of the power mix is high efficiency natural gas… So while there are some considerations of long distance transmission and net grid input/output… it’s more likely that the production of solar energy in Boston will result in offsetting high-efficient natural gas rather than offsetting coal.
It takes about 3-5 W to charge a cell phone. If we assume 5 W, with two chargers per bench, then we’re getting 10 W/$3000, or $300,000/kW. If the city of Boston were to pay for 1000 of these benches ($3 million) and distribute them, then they would be offsetting the production of 10 kW of fossil power, plus another 7% line losses. If we then assumed 100% capacity factor (assuming that all benches would be used 100% of every day) for 20 years, the total carbon mitigation would be ~875 t-CO2. Net 20-year mitigation cost: $3424/t-CO2.
If, instead, the city of Boston were to invest in two 1.5 MW wind turbines in the Midwest, perhaps somewhere in Kansas, the wind turbines would likely have a capacity factor of ~0.35, and they would almost certainly offset all coal. Over the first 20 years, that would lead to a total carbon mitigation of ~183,960 t-CO, for a 20-year carbon mitigation cost of $16.31/t-CO2. At that point, the wind turbine would likely still have another 20 years of life left in them.
In both cases, Boston would be doing something largely symbolic to mitigate carbon emissions, In both cases the cost to Boston would be ~$3 million… But one option is well over 200 times as significant as the other – and it’s all the same atmosphere. But Boston is considering the meaningless option because the people cannot move past their own backyard. In order for us to be successful, we’ll have to do so.
Yes, this is point I made about the PV on the 175,000 power poles in New Jersey, and the guy who wants to popularize his solar EV charging canopy whose MSRP is $125,000. Advocating renewable energy “solutions” that are wildly expensive in terms of $/Watt is not going to help anything/anyone (except the fossil fuel boys who are working so hard to discredit us).