Video: Solar-powered night garden fills Jerusalem with tranquility, world peace soon to follow

Juxtaposing the manmade and the natural in artistic expression oftentimes leads to creepy results. It is no mean feat, then, that the Jerusalem night garden -- built out of steel wires, laser-cut panels and 1W to 3W Power LEDs -- feels like a warm and welcoming place to visit. Whether it is the clean energy source, producing 720W of electricity per hour, or the ethereal light and movement of the flowers, something about the exhibition awakens the wistful child we've got locked away in the Engadget dungeons. He cries out for more of this aesthetically pleasing eco-friendly design, which in this case even comes with a specially composed soundtrack. To see if you agree with such juvenile enthusiasm, check out the video after the break.

[Via inhabitat]

[luke.grechcini @ Jul 13th 2009 6:25AM]

fir....

haha, but really, Watts per hour..? Come on..... a Watt is a joule per second.

[luke.grechcini @ Jul 13th 2009 6:28AM]

fair play actually, power is charged in units of kW/h. sorry :D

[Nikesh @ Jul 13th 2009 7:35PM]

It'll probably be blown up by Thursday.

[bogd @ Jul 13th 2009 7:05AM]

I was just about to say the same thing :) . If it's Watts, it's Watts. Not "every hour" (or second, or minute).

As for power, that is measured in watt-hours (which is "watt*hour", not "watt/hour" as most people seem to believe). So this power plant puts out 720W (power), and can supply "720 watt-hour per hour" (energy).

[Bogd @ Jul 13th 2009 7:09AM]

More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt#Confusion_of_watts_and_watt-hours

[sam @ Jul 13th 2009 7:25AM]

To be fair, this confusion comes from the source. I don't think that's really an excuse though - any writer for a technology blog should at least be familiar with the simplest units of electricity, which are after all covered in basic school science classes...

According to the source the garden uses 1300W, again 'per hour' (ho hum) which suggests to me that it can only run for half as long as daylight. Also, the 720W from the panels seems quite high - is this an average throughout the day or peak capacity in full sunlight? Etc.

(Basically the numbers should probably have been left out of this piece altogether because they're incomprehensible and certainly wrong in at least one if not several ways. Or emailing the source for clarification might be interesting.)

[strider_mt2k @ Jul 13th 2009 7:33AM]

If art can lead to peace in the Middle East then may I respectfully request that everybody start ARTING IT UP IN HERE ALREADY PLEASE?????

[Funkyheff @ Jul 13th 2009 10:53AM]

I was beaten to the punch but this isnt the first time i've seen engadget use bogus power units. Apart from being picky, I actually want to know how much power the panels produce. And just to clarify, although I'm sure the wikipedia article has it, the units you see on your electricity bill are units of energy (kW*hr) and W are a unit of power. kW/hr would be a rate of change of power, which isnt particularly interesting except to the people that run the power grids.

[blah @ Jul 13th 2009 12:30PM]

maybe they are carnivorous flowers that will be planted around Israeli nightclubs and sabarros that eat those Palestinian children with bombs strapped to them

[Samboini @ Jul 13th 2009 1:04PM]

Watts Jerusalem?

[Wwhat @ Jul 13th 2009 3:10PM]

Bit political and reactionary of me, but I pressed 'report comment' because it's a damn techblog where we are trying to have fun and that kind of trolling humor will only mess it all up.

[Wwhat @ Jul 13th 2009 3:11PM]

Report button on the Dr Zeus remark I mean.

[Dror @ Jul 13th 2009 3:27PM]

It's the military occupation, stupid.

Israel's military has ruled the West Bank with an iron fist since 1967. And for the last 40 years, Palestinians have been losing their privately owned lands to Jewish colonies while roadblocks and ghettos and walls were being erected to suffocate an already oppressed population.

Perhaps if Israel treated the Palestinians better and ended the occupation we wouldn't be in this mess.

But, Engadget readers know a half-assed truth. I'm starting to firmly believe that most Engagdet readers are clueless 16 year old nerds.

[Wwhat @ Jul 13th 2009 4:07PM]

I see dror (israeli sounding nick incidentally) only made 2 comments on engadget, both about israel, he actually sits watching engadget to wait for anything related to the freaking middle east, how goddamn sad.