New Solar Streetlight Can Detect Earthquakes
Sharp’s new solar-powered streetlight can do it all. Not only does the light operate for ten years without needing maintenance, but it also automatically turns on when it detects an earthquake.
The light use a high-intensity LED spotlight that has a service life of about 40,000 hours. It charges using built-in solar panels during the day, and shines automatically at night. Best of all, Sharp’s streetlight doesn’t create any light pollution—it’s illuminated with a directed light that doesn’t shine into the sky.
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Perhaps the most intriguing feature of the streetlight is the built-in Seismic Motion Sensor. The sensor is built into the support pole of the main unit, and automatically switches the light to nighttime illumination mode upon detection of a 5.0 earthquake or larger on the Richter Scale. And light is both crucial and hard to find in an earthquake’s aftermath—after the disastrous 1995 Kobe quake, it took two days before power was restored.
Sharp’s streetlight will fittingly debut in Japan, but hopefully it will be deployed in other earthquake zones (ahem, my hometown of San Francisco) soon.
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Will it give advanced warning of an approaching quake, or does it just turn itself off when one is going on? (Sounds like Marvin the depressed robot from Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy.)
Ryan - I wish it could give advanced warning! It just turns on automatically when it detects that a quake is actually going on.
Very cool. I need to learn more about solar power, because at this point I am pretty perplexed as to why we — the whole world of we — are not using this energy source much, much, much more than we are.
I like it but I would think for California they would have to retrofit the light so that it isn’t that bright white color and more the cream-ish yellow color. I think they do that so that the planes don’t mistake the street as a runway.
Isn’t a streetlight supposed to already be on at night? What is the point of having it turn on during a daytime earthquake? I guess it would “look” better swinging around with the light on?
In a power outage, What?, this type of streetlight fixture would not be impeded by severed wire in the electric street lighting infrastructure. It would also be less prone to shattering from vibration (LED would not shatter the way a glass arc bulb might).
For aviation, nobrainerdeals, other colours are used to indicate the presence of a runway (like red marker lights to denote to crowns of light fixtures and building crests) and blue lighting to denote features on the runway itself.
Hi, I think it is a good idea. I am just wondering what is the internal system to detect the ongoing earthquake and how it is tuned to the 5.0 Ricther scale.Is is an accelerometer?what about the distance from the ground?Is this affecting the application?Even I have these doubts (maybe to be clarified jointly) I believe this is a good idea.let’s work together on it and then I will distribute this in italy…