Raise your hand if you knew that streetlamps accounted for 38 percent of all energy used on lighting in the USA. Very good, children! It’s true. And now, the Civil Twilight Design Collective has designed an award-winning light-aware streetlamp that would adjust its intensity based on the brightness of the moon. By using this technology and LEDs instead of the steam-age sodium bulbs we have so many of these days, we could reduce the energy consumption of our nighttime street-lighting solution by as much as 90 percent. It’ll probably be expensive as hell, but I say bring it on. Maybe now I’ll be able to see these “stars” everyone talks about.
Lunar Resonant Streetlights [Treehugger, via PSFK]