Belgrade Hosts First Public Solar-Powered Cell Charging Station 106
arisvega writes "Dead battery in Belgrade, Serbia? Head to the city's Obrenovac district, where a group of students has developed the world's first public charging station powered entirely by solar energy. Known as the Strawberry Tree, the structure's 16 ports support a variety of handhelds, allowing pedestrians to juice up their handhelds in just ten to 15 minutes, at no charge. Its built-in batteries can also store up to a month's worth of back-up energy, enabling the station to hum along at night, or even during Serbia's less sunny seasons. 'Energy from the sun is free, and it would be unethical to charge people to use the Strawberry Tree...We are trying to inspire young people to think about the source of the energy they use, and behave and act responsibly,' said the inventor Milos Milisavljevic (17 years old when he came up with the idea) and now, at the ripe old age of 22, is looking to plant new stations across other Serbian cities."
Youth is wasted on the young (Score:5, Insightful)
'Energy from the sun is free, and it would be unethical to charge people to use the Strawberry Tree...We are trying to inspire young people to think about the source of the energy they use, and behave and act responsibly,' said the inventor Milos Milisavljevic
If the entire Strawberry Tree installation was free to design, free to build, free to maintain, free to fix after being vandalized, and free of any rents or taxes on the land it stands on . . . then the question of fees would never enter the picture, because Strawberry Trees would already be available everywhere.
Until then, very few moral codes are irrational enough to condemn a fee for services rendered.
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And his reason for providing it free is because he considers it unethical to charge for power he collected "free".
I'll also add, doesn't surprise me that its a student spouting such idealism. I expect someone else is footing the bill for parts (the student's university springs to mind).
Its a lot harder to provide the service free when it personally costs you $1500+USD with no return other then a feel good vibe.
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If capital setup costs were met by taxpayer funds, and ongoing operational/maintenance costs are free or also met by taxpayer funds, I don't see what the problem is. Unrestricted capitalism has been proven not to work, and funded social services have a long and successful tradition in europe.
Re:Youth is wasted on the young (Score:4, Insightful)
Proponents of unrestricted capitalism have the false belief that unrestricted power in the hands of a few is a good idea, those in favor of unrestricted socialism have the false belief that somehow just because someone works for the government they will automatically be any better than if they were working for themselves. And here is a hint, Hugo Chavez and his ilk are pretty much working for themselves, and only themselves, no matter how much they tell you they aren't. Look at Venezuala's economy ever since Chavez came into power. Despite incredibly high oil prices the economy has actually fallen behind a lot of it's neighbors because Chavez is looting it for his own personal gain. He wants you to think that just because he works for "the people", he actually gives a damn about the people. And with nobody to stand in his way, he can pretty much behave like the capitalists he so decries.
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Unrestricted socialist government has been proven not to work as well.
There, FTFY
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Give me an example of an unrestricted socialist economy that has thrived. Go ahead, I can wait.
You missed the point. You cannot say things like "understricted socialism" because socialism is an ideology and not its implementation.
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Well, Germany doesn't restrict the benefits of socialism to just the top dogs as USA does, and is doing far better economically. The Soviet Union practiced (authoritarian) communism, and went from a failed agrarian state to the second-most powerful country in the world in a few decades. China has a semi-command economy, and is on its way to becoming the next hyperpower.
I'm a bit uncertain about what you mean by "
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While I'm not convinced that China is going anywhere (all economies with any form or extent of socialism or capitalism) are going to see slumps economically. Reviving them is the hard part. You can't say socialism or capitalism has failed just because mostly communist or mostly capitalist countries have done poorly at one point or another. Success is largely dependent on those leading the country to make the right decisions. Both democratic and communist countries go through periods of being well-off and ha
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Germany also has a thriving capitalist economy which supports their socialist programs. In fact, they're not really any more socialist than the United States. The difference is that their cultural attitudes differ considerably from that of the US and most of Europe.
Germans are generally hard working and motivated. They're efficient. They enforce regulations across the board, the average individual is no more spared from them than a big corporation. The people haven't been conditioned to make unreasonably ex
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Let's examine this claim in detail in the light of your own arguments, shall we?
The very existence of regulations, which are government intervention in the free marke
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Give me an example of an unrestricted capitalist economy that has thrived. Go ahead, I can wait.
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"only a small portion of the population requires cell phone recharging"
Please remember we are talking about Europe here, were the overwhelming majority of the population has a cell phone, and where many people are out and walking about in densely populated cities. You could argue that it's not the government's job to provide charging, but to base that argument on need is fairly ridiculous. Lots of people would use this kind of service.
As far as what you call unrestricted socialism (hint: it has never been p
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For the record, Chavez, Castro, Stalin et al use(d) the pretext of socialism to implement fascist dictatorships. It's not socialism.
Ah, the old "no true socialist" argument.
Of course, I can think of at least one prominent historical socialist [wikipedia.org] who would agree [wikipedia.org] with [wikipedia.org] you [wikipedia.org], so socialist idealists seem to consistently go for the "no true socialist" argument (i.e., none of the governmental systems seen so far which self-identifies as "socialist" are, in fact, truly socialist). I guess the question is true sociali
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If History is any indication, then no, it's not attainable, at least not on the scale of a country. I think it's because ultimately, it goes against human nature. Self-serving actions are not only an integral part of our behavior, but if properly channeled, are healthy for the individual and society.
Of course, focusing solely on the self-serving aspects of our nature, such as in a purely capitalist system, also leads to extreme injustice and desperate living conditions for large parts of the population.
In t
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the government should NOT be involved in providing luxuries like cell phone charging
Why not? They are your elected servants, it is within their obligations to elevate quality of living.
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MY city installed several EV charging stations for people to use for free...
Yes they cut police to the point that we do not have police officers patrolling some neighborhoods at night.
I am glad the rich people get to charge their EV's for free! Now I have to go shopping for floodlights because of the asshole teenage boys that like to vandalize.
No kidding (Score:5, Insightful)
Now I should start by saying if they wish to provide this as a free service, I think that is wonderful. I've no objections to people who wish to provide something too people at no cost. If you are willing to eat the costs, time, money, and otherwise, then by all means. Altruism is great.
However his reasoning is extremely stupid. The sun does not charge for its energy, but then neither does any other source. Uranium charges nothing to release the energy it contains in a nuclear reaction. So why then does it cost money? Well because you have to mine that uranium (and by extension build equipment to mine it), refine it (and of course build a facility to refine it), and then have it operated in a proper reactor to turn it in to useful energy (which again you have to build). That the uranium charges nothing to release its energy has no bearing on there being costs to bring it to a useful state.
Same deal with solar. The sun bombards the Earth with electromagnetic radiation of many frequencies all the time, and does so at no cost. However, to do almost anything useful with that energy, you have to construct something. Even if it is as simple as capturing the IR to heat something you are going to need things like lenses, mirrors, insulation, etc.
In this case, of course, you need a bunch of solar panels, batteries, and associated hardware. That is not cheap to make. Solar panels, particularly efficient ones, take a good bit of work to produce and thus have a good bit of costs associated. Now if he wants to eat those costs and provide the service free, good on him. But let's not pretend those costs don't exist.
Solar power is NOT free. We don't want to go down the road where people think "Oh we don't need to put money towards solar/wind/etc because it is free." Hell no, we need to put money towards it. R&D and deployment isn't cheap. If we want it as one of our energy sources we need to be willing to spend money to make it happen.
Heck, money is the one and only reason I don't have solar on my condo. I live in a very sunny area, my association would let me do it, I like the idea, and so on. So why the hell don't I have panels? I can't afford it, that's why. The up front cost is too high. I am not a rich person I can't afford to bear it, even though it would pay for itself in a couple decades most likely.
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Even if everything about the project would be free, it would not be unethical to ask a fee for providing this service. That's just smart business.
It's been paid for by the people with their tax money. So I think it's ok that it's free for the same people to use for free.
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Too bad most governments don't agree with that logic, when they sends you the bill for the electricity from the power-plants funded with your tax money.
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Too bad most governments don't agree with that logic, when they sends you the bill for the electricity from the power-plants funded with your tax money.
I just said it's ok, never that it was universally the case anywhere. In fact, most research done at Belgrade University rarely end up as a free publicly available product.
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It's a lot easier to persuade for a government to persuade parliament to spend money if it can be sold as an investment rather than a cost.
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Is there no organization that would provide panels, installation and support for a monthly fee that would be less than paying the local energy company?
Local solar isn't the solution to everything, but it should be able to save you money on your electric bill if there's a bank or other organization out there that can front you the cost.
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The payoff time for a loan to buy solar panels, inverter, etc. today is around 20 years. This is including all of the available subsidies, rebates and tax incentives that pay for about half of a solar installation.
While people in the early part of the 20th century planned to buy a single house and live there all of their lives, most people are somewhat more mobile than that today. While a solar electric system has some benefits for selling a house, you aren't going to recoup 100% of the costs if you sell
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"However his reasoning is extremely stupid."
Even though he built the thing, I'm sure he didn't consider these things you mention. We can only hope he's reading Slashdot so he can learn of them.
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You're right, he did build it therefore he really should know better than to make such foolish comments. But since he apparently doesn't know better I too hope he's reading Slashdot so he can read the grandparent's correction.
Re:Youth is wasted on the young (Score:5, Informative)
Why everything has to be all about money, money, money?
Yhea, it is very insightful to point the obvious - that the installation cost money. "No free lunch" can always get you some mod points. Please, introduce a mod +1 (conforming and mindlessly parroting the existing paradigm)
But you know what - you are surrounded by people giving things for free. Read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy [wikipedia.org]
Some excerpts to sharpen your appetite:
----There are many examples of how a gift economy works in modern culture within a mixed economy, such as marriage, family, friendship, kinship, and social network structures.
-----Traditional scientific research can be thought of as an information gift economy. Scientists produce research papers and give them away through journals and conferences. Other scientists freely refer to such papers. All scientists can therefore benefit from the increased pool of knowledge. The original scientists receive no direct benefit from others building on their work, except an increase in their reputation. Failure to cite and give credit to original authors (thus depriving them of reputational effects) is considered improper behavior.[27]
-----In his essay "Homesteading the Noosphere", noted computer programmer Eric S. Raymond opined that open-source software developers have created "a 'gift culture' in which participants compete for prestige by giving time, energy, and creativity away".[29] Members of the Linux community often speak of their community as a gift economy.[30]
------Millions of articles are available on Wikipedia, a free on-line encyclopedia, and almost none of its innumerable authors and editors receive any direct material reward.[31][32]
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Just remember: capitalism never halts innovation, with of course the exception of software patents.........
FTFY
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Software patents, and in fact all patents, are one of those 'fetters' on capitalism, not part of capitalism. Intellectual property, such as it is in unfettered capitalism, is entirely enforced in contracts and keeping secrets secret.
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His point is not that giving things away is a bad idea, it's that the reasoning behind it is flawed. I have released a lot of code as Free Software, because doing so costs me nothing other than opportunity costs, it serves to advertise my skills to prospective clients, and because I benefit from bug reports and patches if my code has more than one user. Those are sane and rational reasons for giving stuff away. If I said I give it away because ones and zeros are free and so it's unethical to do anything
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If I said I gave it away because it benefits others and makes me feel good about myself, I'd also expect that to be considered a valid reason; it's the reason most people give gifts - they enjoy the reaction of the recipient.
The reason I don't agree with the reason they quote for releasing this product for free is that it's already been paid for by citizens. It wasn't free. It was paid for. So people who paid for it get to use it for free. I'm also glad they provided it for free, because too many things developed at the Belgrade University never gets into public hands despite being funded by the University (and therefore by taxpayer money).
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-----Traditional scientific research can be thought of as an information gift economy. Scientists produce research papers and give them away through journals and conferences.
I agree with the ideas you posted. I can't do anything but cry foul that the scientists produce research paper and give them away but the journals charge an arm and a leg for me to access it.
I mean: I would mind charging for accessing an article, but I can't see the difference between the cost of hosting/downloading an MP3 or a PDF with the article. However, I can buy an MP3 with $0.99, but beat me if I could find any article for less than $25-$30 on the publisher's sites.
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I can't do anything but cry foul that the scientists produce research paper and give them away but the journals charge an arm and a leg for me to access it.
You have to be aware that University of Belgrade is government-funded. It's not a private university. I don't see any reason a private university would give their research papers for free, but a government-run university has an obligation to release their research paper because the citizens pay them to do the research to begin with.
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Then I don't see any reason why it should be called "university" and thus share in the prestige it had no part in building, nor any intention to do so in the future.
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Then I don't see any reason why it should be called "university" and thus share in the prestige it had no part in building, nor any intention to do so in the future.
I agree.
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Why everything has to be all about money, money, money?
It's a cultural issue. Some cultures worship money, and some don't.
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Why everything has to be all about money, money, money?
Because money is a representation of time and energy, and in a universe ruled by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, everything is about time and energy.
But you know what - you are surrounded by people giving things for free. Read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy [wikipedia.org]
Nothing in a "gift economy" is free. This is the same sort of reasoning used by proponents of socialism or communism: "oh, I like it when I get fre stuff!". How ignorant do you have to be in order to not realize that this is just another form of payment? A gift economy is based on the belief that if I give you what you want, you or someone else will give
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irrational
According to whose standards?
Re:Youth is wasted on the young (Score:4, Insightful)
Or maybe its because if you charged a fee to use the service, you'd have to increase the price to account for the servicing overhead - either an attendant, or an automated ticket system with cut-off timers and all the associated electronics.
Instead its better to charge once via taxes or grants and then allow useage for free. More people will use it and the cost of providing the service will be much reduced.
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Until then, very few moral codes are irrational enough to condemn a fee for services rendered.
And even fewer to condemn educational and charitable works for no fee at all.
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[...] it would be unethical to charge a fee [...]
Until then, very few moral codes are irrational enough to condemn a fee for services rendered.
And even fewer to condemn educational and charitable works for no fee at all.
I offered no judgment of the Strawberry Tree project, or of the inventor's decision to make it free. I only criticized his statement that it would be 'unethical' to charge a fee.
Sorry to ruin your dopamine rush. I know how delicious it is to jump somebody's case via the internet.
!New (Score:1)
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Certainly not first, certainly not 15 minutes, etc (Score:5, Interesting)
Saw a similar, amateur setup in the tiny harbor of my hometown, NeuchÃtel, Switzerland, maybe, huh, 10 years ago?
Unfortunately the 8+ different cellphone charging cables provided weren't rugged enough for an outdoor/public setting, and I suspect that frequent damage is what eventually decided the owner to eventually, er, shall I say, pull the plug.
Also, re charging time: common Li-ion takes 2~3h for a full charge, 15 minutes may be a 80-to-90% top-off...
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Yea these things pop up every now and again, there was some hitting the news not to long ago... News editors are too dumb to figure out patio table + solar cell = charging station and are constantly impressed by this.
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Re:Baaaaaad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure electricity companies will go bust because people can charge their phones for free just by standing around outside for 15 minutes.
Or, maybe, cafes will start deploying this kind of system. After all, if you have to wait 15 minutes, you may as well have a cup of coffee at the same time. The energy cost is pretty much nothing. My phone's battery is about 5Wh, which at the price I pay for electricity is a tiny fraction of a penny, and would be lost in the noise for a small business.
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At least one of the cafe's at Helsinki airport terminal 1 already does this. They have a charging system installed in a few places throughout the cafe. All you need to do is pick up a charging ring, which is basically an inductive coupler, and place it between your phone and the marked surfaces where the chargers are installed in the tabletops. This is a free service. Yes, sometimes services are given away for free, not everyone is a greedy bastard in this world.
Internet café (Score:3)
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I'm sure the builder of the strawberry tree is wealthy in order to provide this service for free. And the fool is probably feeling all warm inside, thinking he helps humanity.
RTFA. It's a government-run University.
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Remember, kids, you've read it here first: anything free is socialism, and socialism is evil! ~
Solar Energy is Free so it would be unethical... (Score:4, Interesting)
A capitalist would I think argue with, cost+financing of the solar cells, payment for the workers installing them, plus profit, before setting the price. But even capitalists offer lose leaders for advertising.
But if a urban council, own the land, then they is a strong case for providing useful services free to the public. How often people need public phone charging I don't know. Since mobile have become popular that the public pay phone is an endangered species, so are free charging points needs. Discuss...
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Free Energy [feeddistiller.com] Feed @ Feed Distiller [feeddistiller.com]
Solar Energy? Why not. (Score:1)
Riverworld (Score:1)
Can this technology be applied to food, please? using a 3D printer, maybe.
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Can this technology be applied to food, please? using a 3D printer, maybe.
If you want to eat paper, glue, and some coloring agent, sure.
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chocolate in the sun seems like a pointless endeavor
Why not ask for donations so more can be build? (Score:4, Insightful)
There's no problem with it being free -- but this would be a way to make the idea spread. Some of the components will cost money to buy, some of the installation work might need to be done by a qualified installer / builder. If the first one allows you to keep some cash, it can be reinvested -- more can follow and more people would be able to enjoy the service.
at "no charge"! (Score:3, Funny)
Did he say it was free? (Score:2)
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You guys got it all wrong (Score:1)
This service could be provided for free, why not? (Score:1)
Take a look at the freely provided services from the IT sector, Google for example. They provide numerous, extremely useful services for no charge. Additionally, there are no taxes incurred for the use or association of these services. Linux is another good example.
Now we ask the question, what covers the cost of fabrication, installation, servicing, and all things associated with the unit's life-cycle? How are the other free services paid for? Many are paid for via advertising. Take for example the possibi
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Many recent phones charge via their mini/micro USB sockets, so it is a risk. How do you know that the other end of the cable is connected only to power and not to a PC/laptop, up to no good?
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Troll.
In case you are just being ignorant, it's widely known that the Free Public WiFi access points you see everywhere are actually due to a quirk in Windows XP's wireless networking pre-SP3. Basically, if XP can't connect to any pre-defined access points, it will automatically create an ad-hoc wireless network with the SSID Free Public WiFi. You can't actually connect to it and you can't browse the net with it. You are actually at no risk if you attempt to connect to one of these, although someone could a