What do you do when you've got two disused shipping crates, some photovoltaics, and a couple buckets of toxic green paint? Why, you make a solar electric vehicle charging station, the first in New York as it happens. It was created by Beautiful Earth Group, which whipped up this self-contained charging station to juice the company's car, a similarly painted
BMW Mini E that just so happens to fit nicely inside -- so long as you don't want to open the doors too wide. About three hours charges the little sucker up for its maximum range of 100 miles, which ought to be just enough to get you out to the Hamptons. Not that you'd want to go
there this time of year.
Update: We searched for an earlier solar station and came up empty, but vyper0 commented to let us know that this is indeed not the first for NY state, just the first for NYC. There was one
installed out on Long Island earlier this year, which would mean you could not only get
out to the Hamptons, but get back!
posted December 16th 2009 8:48AM
This charging station is housed inside a container makes it look like a trap to steal your car. In three hours, they truck the container to the dock and ship em' elsewhere.
For some reason the solid white / (mostly)single solid other color makes me think of Mirror's Edge.
@7
*pictures hapless person falling to their death from a height in front of mini*
3 hours is surprisingly short for solar charging. Don't these things take 8 hours or more on normal electricity?
@mrklaw
It probably has a large bank of batteries in the top shipping container that will transfer the power stored fairly quickly.
It is a neat idea, and I like it. However, I would guess it costs $30,000 - $35,000 for the solar panels, batteries, electronics, and shipping containers. If it was in Arizona, Nevada, or Southern Cal, it would make more sense to me.
I'm just picturing myself reopening the container doors and finding myself on a container ship somewhere...
They should toss a wind turbine on there for cloudy days.
@headhot Speaking of windy days, does anyone else feel that those heavy solar panels on top are just waiting to be blown off?
Very cool
It may get you *to* the Hamptons (~100mi) but how are you going to get back?
I think it's important to keep in mind that this is one of the first. at one time gas stations were pretty hard to find....a lot can change in a short amount of time. green transportation technology is advancing pretty rapidly.
The colors and the circular green line made me immediately think this was some kind of Xbox marketing thing.
Hey the hamptons can be great this time of year because NOBODY is there.
What an eye sore.
I'm really surprised that this is the first one in all of New York. Several large companies, such as Dell, have started installing these in employee parking lots.
It just suprises me that some wealthy NYer hasn't already added one of these at their home or company.
@FitFan but it is the first one to use 2 shipping containers as part of their recharge station.
Why? Because they found them just lying around. You know, just drive on down by the docks and there are thousands of them, just lying there....
We like to call that "Rave Green" in Seattle.
I'd hate to be the bloke who's gotta clean the pigeon shish offa that panel... Mike Roe?
If that solar array is 9 ft. by 50 ft., as I estimate by the photo, and the solar panels are 12% efficient, then they will produce 5400 watts in perfect clear noon sunlight. (9*50=450 ft^2, 100 W/ft^2 @noon * 0.12 = 12 * 450 = 5400 W) or 5.4kW per hour.
The Mini E hold 35kW of energy in its batteries, so it would take 6.4 hours to charge IF the sun were high in the sky on a perfectly clear day.
At this time of year, you are lucky to get 3 hours equivalent of this type of insolation in New York City. So it would take over two full days of charging to be able to drive the Mini E's range of 100 miles.
I should point out that in New York City, there simply isn't enough sunlight for the solar array to ever produce as much energy output as the energy input in fabricating, installing, and maintaining them.
This would work in the sunny Southwest of Southern California, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico, but in New York City, you'd have less CO2 emissions if you used coal fired energy than that stupid "green" solar array.
NY's first solar carport was installed at both NYIT (Old Westbury and Central Islip, NY) campuses in April 2009. I guess this is New York City's first.
http://www.nyit.edu/news/2009/July/article_145/
http://www.lipower.org/newscenter/pr/2009/100209-hybrid.html
@vyper0 Thanks for that, we looked all over and couldn't find an earlier one. I posted an update.