14 DAY TRIAL // Usually, billboards take high amounts of energy from the power grid in order to light up, especially during night time. However, this is about to change, as an electricity supplier from California has installed the first electric energy generating billboard in the U.S. This device produces energy with the help of 20 solar panels, which are placed on its roof.
The actual power it produces is more than enough to exceed the necessary level it consumes of a day to day basis. Produced by the Pacific Gas and Electricity company, on a sunny day, the billboard power plant could produce about 3.4 kilowatt of energy, equivalent to the energy consumption of an average family of four, while during cloudy days it's able to output about 2.5 kilowatt of energy.
However, it presents a small disadvantage, as during the night is unable to produce any energy, and thus, it will drain power out of the existing electric grid. Even so, the billboard, which has been installed at 1000 Brannan Street in San Francisco, balances the ratio of energy it produces and consumes, so it remains positive all the time, which means that it is actively producing excess energy.
It uses light emitting diodes, in order to minimize the energy consumption, instead of the classical billboards equipped with energy hungry halophane lights, which require three times the energy to power them.
Nevertheless, the billboard power plant has arrived a bit too late in the world's most powerful country, as similar devices have been installed in Canada and Africa long before than in the U.S., and are efficiently producing energy that is pushed into the electric grid. According to spokesman Jennifer Zelwer, for now the billboard is only for show, but eventually all the classical ones will get replaced with the billboard power plant, in order to minimize the energy consumed by these devices on a daily basis.
Executive director of the nonprofit group Vote Solar Initiative, Adam Browning, believes that solar power should be a key element in California and in the U.S., in the fight to reduce the greenhouse gas emission during fossil fuel burning. The Californian power company demonstrated that renewable energy could work for areas such as California, while the leadership remains highly critical about the global warming fight.