Carbon Footprints

There’s a story over at Virginia Tech in the USA, Lamp lit by gravity wins Greener Gadget award, about an industrial design student there who has developed a gravity powered LED lamp called Gravia.

Clay Moulton of Springfield, Va., who received his master of science degree in architecture (concentration in industrial design) from the College of Architecture and Urban Studies in 2007, created the lamp when he was an industrial design graduate student. The light-emitting diode (LED) lamp, named Gravia, has just won second place in the Greener Gadgets Design Competition as part of the Greener Gadgets Conference in New York City.

Concept illustrations of Gravia depict an acrylic column a little over four feet high. The entire column glows when activated. The electricity is generated by the slow fall of a mass that spins a rotor. The resulting energy powers 10 high-output LEDs that fire into the acrylic lens, creating a diffuse light. The operation is silent and the housing is elegant and cord free — completely independent of electrical infrastructure.

The light output will be 600-800 lumens - roughly equal to a 40-watt incandescent bulb over a period of four hours.

Now that’s using the old noodle! Of course nit-pickers will argue that there are still carbon emissions because the person supplying the energy has to actually eat to get that energy, but that’s like arguing that bikes are worse for the environment than cars because the rider needs to eat. People eat and you know what, we waste around 90% of the energy we consume just sitting around reading a book.

How does it work?

Well it’s actually very simple. Following the diagram above from left to right:

1. You lift the weight to the top and it is drawn down again by gravity over a four hour period
2. The downward motion turns a high efficiency ball-screw
3. The torque from the ball-screw is overdriven at a 1:160 ratio by an harmonic gear drive
4. Output from the harmonic gear drive spins a set of 12 powerful neodymium magnets
5. The magnets form a rotor in the base of the lamp
6. The electricity generated by the rotor powers 10 high output LED lamps which shine into the acrylic lens, creating diffuse light

The Gravia lamp looks amazing and I want one. And I’d pay to neutralise the emissions associated with shipping it to my home. Indeed I’d buy four of them for my apartment as the lighting here sucks anyway. My message to Mr Moulton, make something like this that powers a heater and refridgerator too. Roll on the brass-age. — DS

Technorati Tags: alternative energy, emissions reduction, energy efficiency, Gravia, green power, lighting

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 4:34 pm and is filed under Alternative Energy, Forces for Good. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.