As we know it
There is a new gizmo in town! After big businesses toyed with electronic billboards, there is now the self powered Public billboards thanks to Cheng Ya-Fang and Lin Nien-An. Lighting billboards were always a problem, and huge amount of money was spent in its electricity consumption. Not any more! The solar powered electronic billboards can upload posters, pictures⨠and even video! The solar powered billboards are a welcome move as it avoids the wastage of paper for the purpose and is eco friendly too, consuming no electricity at all! It takes all its energy from the sun and can thus work anytime without harming the environment. Moreover, the self powered billboard has an unique system of displaying ads – it does so by rotating ads and once an ad expires, the area goes blank, indicating that it is now up for rent.
Need for change
For long have billboards relied on electricity. Companies who looked to billboards as a way of advertising always wanted their billboards to stay lit throughout the nights. The billboards had to be near to the grid or should be connected to a generator for the lighting purposes and many a times operated throughout the day. This contributed a lot to fossil fuel depletion as electricity is mostly produced from fossil fuels and here were the billboards consuming electricity day after day! In these times where the stock of fossil fuels have become scarce there was an urgent need of change and so this self powered billboard is a great move in the right direction.
What’s next?
1. Billboard Wind Turbines Powered by Passing Vehicles
Whatâs new
This billboard will power itself from the power of the winds, yes through wind power! This is a creation of a student from the Arizona State University and is the newest ingenious thought which has gone into making billboards electricity free!
What difference will it make
This wind turbine can be fitted into a highway billboard and the turbine itself is powered from the turbulence caused by passing cars! He used average annual wind speeds of 10 mph as the baseline. As the average speeds on highways are around 70 mph, each single turbine is expected to generate around 9,600KwH of energy, annually! It is expected that the wind speeds generated will be much more than the baseline of 10 mph and so the energy generated per year will me much more thus making our dependence on electricity for billboards much lesser!
Problems
There types of billboards can only be used where there are high ways and where wind speeds match up to what is required. So, it has only limited amount of use.
2. Honda solar-powered hybrid billboards
Whats new
This one is a creation of Honda and Honda ensures that its latest billboards portrays its concern for the welfare of the environment. This one is also a solar powered billboard.
What difference will it make
As Honda has released the solar self powered billboard it is expected that solar billboards would now herald a new dawn of Eco friendly promotional tactics, thus benefiting the environment.
Problems
Though a great start in the right direction, one needs to wait and see how far these eco friendly promotional campaigns are successful and accepted by the people.
3. Lamar Advertising going green with new solar-powered billboards
Whats new
This billboard not only uses solar power but also light reflecting digital light to power itself and work without electricity consumption. Billboard uses solar power and light-reflecting digital light. Here the solar power and light reflecting digital light are somewhat blended together to ensure the billboard works with very less energy consumption.
What difference will it make
Lamar Advertising which has made this billboard, is looking for alternatives to current digital billboards with inventions such as these. These billboards are also enabled to give more higher resolutions than LEDs and so are of considerable interest to the companies who are intent on advertising their products.
Problems
This is one of the initiatives taken by Lamar Advertising for making Eco friendly billboards and it is yet to be seen how well this initiative takes off. There is of course, the usual drawbacks of the solar PVs that can also be taken into consideration.
4. Ricoh eco friendly billboard powered by wind and solar energy
Whatâs new
This billboard is touted as Europe’s first sustainable billboard or the ‘eco-board’ which is completely powered by wind and solar energy.
What difference does it make
This is the second launch of Ricoh and this billboard only illuminates itself after having collected sufficient only after having collected sufficient energy from wind and sun, and Europe’s first sustainable billboard has made the advertising industry be more responsible towards the environment’s welfare.
Problems
A large number of wind turbines and solar panels will be required for the purpose which is often not viable. Here, five separate wind turbines and 96 solar panels are required. So unless there is plenty of space these kind of billboards are difficult to be put up into place.
