Smart solar urban furniture: design, application, limits and potentials

Abstract

Smart urban street furniture is a growing reality with several projects and companies producing objects integrated with photovoltaic technologies. Smart bus stops, pergolas, canopies, carports, solar trees, solar benches are just some examples of the objects available today. Some of the opportunities offered by smart urban street furniture are self-powered rechargeable docks for smartphones or other devices, information screens, public lighting, free wi-fi, rechargeable stations for electric vehicles. They can be used to collect big data, offering opportunities for our daily lives, also after the covid-19 pandemic. The aim of this research is to provide a classification of the most important solar urban street furniture, to understand the strategies adopted in case studies and to understand the main problems related to the adoption of these devices and where future research should focus. The methodology involved a selection of international case studies in important urban contexts to gather information as: architectural integration, context sensitivity, system visibility. The preliminary results indicate that potential limits to the application of these technologies are urban morphology and lack of design of some solutions. This study can be useful to understand the potential use of these products in our territory.