Energy

Solar Serpents

By December 15, 2010 7 Comments

Stuck in traffic during the hot summer months, nothing feels better than the cold air rushing through the air conditioner. We allow the sun to heat our cars and then use a lot of fuel to cool the inside. This seems rather silly when you consider this alternative, which is a project by the Swedish architect and urban strategist Mans Tham, called Solar Serpents.

all images courtesy of mans tham
The idea is really simple; cover the highways with an electricity generating shading device. This way, we do two things at the same time:

  1. Shade the road, meaning you wouldn’t need to cool down the car so much. This would save energy.
  2. We would generate immense quantities of electricity from the solar panels.

It would make sense to think of it as a linear solar power plant that has the additional value of shading the highway underneath it.

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