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Highway lamp pole generators?

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peteb2:
 :palm: Mini wind-turbine in the roadside lamp pole catches the draft off a passing car that charges the storage battery that powers the lamp all night?

Not since the Solar (Freaking) Highways uselessness have we seen the start of another campaign from a Smart-shit businesses to suck in gullible city councils and silly governments…

www.tinyurl.com/2cefyk6y

AVGresponding:
:palm:

I think a large part of the problem is that the people in local government responsible for allocating funding for energy efficiency and renewables projects are not engineers, and so are easily sucked in by a slick sales pitch.

cgroen:
Something tells me that this (nonsense) generator will have an impact on the gas consumption of the passing cars.....

Haenk:
Does it have an impact on the gas consumption? I'm not sure about this, as you are pushing the air away anyway, so the energy is already wasted (without generator, the air will just push more air, aka turning the compressed air into heat, eventually).
However this is still stupid, as the method to generate/store electrical energy is *way* more expensive than the electrical energy itself, probably in decades (not even calculating the maintenance costs).

PlainName:

--- Quote ---However this is still stupid, as the method to generate/store electrical energy is *way* more expensive than the electrical energy itself
--- End quote ---

How so? A turbine is alleged to generate "as much energy as 215 square feet of solar panels" which isn't a trivial amount. There should be little per-unit cost to store that (these are mounted on existing light poles, so there is already wiring to them - same situation as domestic panelts feeding back to the grid). BFO battery or whatever storage back at base means that cost is spread over all units (and there could be a LOT of them).

Mostly using existing infrastructure, the cost of the turbine (making, fitting, etc) is what the generated power has to pay for.

But... suppose it doesn't and the network is run on a net loss. Maybe that's how we have to go to be 'green'. It's one thing saying that doing this costs X amount more than not doing it, but if you need that power and you can't tap a cheap (aka fossil fuel) source then that's what you have to pay. OK, you say, just put up more solar panels or wind farms, but where? I think it's a bit simplistic to say "Gosh, that costs money so it's shit".

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