Energy transition meets innovation: modular solar canopies for urban spaces

An American company has developed LumaPort, a modular shelter that integrates solar panels, electric vehicle charging stations and LED lights, transforming parking lots into photovoltaic power plants. Easy to assemble, the system is assembled like children's building blocks, without the need for specialized technicians.

These are the challenges of energy transition. Makers, scientists, and companies around the globe are thus challenged to produce efficient, non-intrusive, and creative solutions.

We have seen this trend with foldable origami-like portable panels and those that use broad, otherwise unused surfaces-such as those installed on Oslo’s Ullevaal Stadium. Research is also being conducted on building entire roads made of solar modules. These innovations utilize existing infrastructure and urban surroundings to deliver energy efficiently.

Rethinking parking lot canopies

Most of us might agree that parking lot canopies at shopping centers aren’t architectural marvels. Nonetheless, it does its required job for shielding the interior of cars parked inside those canopies, especially on a very hot summer to prevent its interiors from scorching.

What if these could work much harder in making electricity generated by the color of their shades green?

Enter a U.S.-based company with a modular solution called LumaPort, designed to transform unused parking lot roofs into solar power stations. Here’s how it works.

Each unit comes equipped with solar panels, electric vehicle charging stations, LED lights, and other essential components. Delivered pre-assembled, the module is ready to be installed in any parking lot. The primary advantage for businesses is the speed of installation: these modules can be linked together just like building blocks.

A snap-together solar system

These modules are designed to be easy to assemble and don’t require specialized engineers or technicians. Each of the components will lock together-like a toy construction set-so that the entire assembly can be done rapidly and efficiently.

With this simple solution, it could soon literally be child’s play to generate, store, and distribute electricity in cities.

Source: World4Solar

Toyota’s portable hydrogen cartridges: a new future for mobility

With portable hydrogen cartridges, Toyota aims to revolutionize the mobility of the future. An innovative solution that promises quick recharges and domestic uses

©Toyota

But already, Toyota contemplates a brilliant idea for how mobility will be in the future: portable hydrogen cartridges, resembling huge batteries, that promise to refuel a car in a few seconds. This technology, that the Japanese giant will show at the Japan Mobility Bizweek, tends to make every stop to refuel faster than those requested nowadays by electric vehicles.

In addition, Toyota foresees hydrogen-powered applications for homes and emergency appliances, taking the concept of “mobility” even beyond just four wheels.

How they work

Portable hydrogen cartridges are designed to provide a fast and safe way of powering vehicles and home devices. Each cartridge contains compressed hydrogen that can be quickly inserted and replaced like a battery. All of these cartridges are light and compact, easy to carry, and can be used for car refueling or entertaining appliances in a household. Regarding this process, it is in the interest of the Toyota Company to create such an infrastructure where these cartridges could easily be distributed and recharged, bringing hydrogen into everyday life.

What is peculiar with these hydrogen cartridges is that they would not just be for cars but part of a wider ecosystem where hydrogen could meet our everyday lives well inside our homes à la today’s home delivery services. This technology reduces the time it takes to refuel quickly compared to electric cars. Ambitious though it might be, Toyota remains convinced of the model’s sustainability, mainly if the hydrogen is produced with renewable sources.

Is hydrogen really a green alternative?

The company, Toyota, however views hydrogen as key in the fight against climate change because, upon its combustion, it emits just water. But the question of whether hydrogen is, in fact, a sustainable alternative remains open, considering that there are huge problems that are apparent in its large-scale production and distribution. Other companies, not excluding Hyundai and BMW, are working on their different versions involving hydrogen. This can only be an indication of growing interest in alternatives to conventional batteries.

Source: Toyota