It’s Night and Day for This Innovative Outdoor Fabric
An innovative outdoor fabric stores energy by day then lights up at night. The sun does all the work, so there are no carbon emissions, making the lighting all-natural and free!
LumiWeave ticks all the sustainable boxes as it creates clean energy without emissions or light pollution, according to the company. Being piloted in a city park now, this totally “cool” fabric is garnering interest for its many urban uses.
This is the brainchild of Anai Green, an industrial and product designer based in Tel Aviv, Israel, according to nocamels. She designed a shading fabric that is inlaid with organic and solar photovoltaic cells. The cells capture sunlight and store the energy in strips with LEDs. When night falls, these strips light up.
“There are no carbon emissions at all,” Green told nocamels. “We use it to light public space without spreading light pollution — because the light is under a canopy.”
No installation costs and saves on lighting
In addition, LumiWeave is cost effective as it does not require the installation of an infrastructure in order to work. You simply put it up and the sun will do the work. This in itself saves 50 percent of the cost of building standard lighting, and it saves 100 percent on the electricity bills.
This is great news for cities. The city of Tel Aviv, Green’s hometown, is trying out LumiWeave in Atidim Park. The fabric is now covering large swathes of parkland and trails in an area that is home to many high tech, medical, and financial companies, according to The Times of Israel.
View this post on Instagram
The mayor of Tel Aviv, Ron Huldai, is committed to addressing climate change. “LumiWeave will turn out to be a groundbreaking project,” Huldai told The Times of Israel. The mayor added that LumiWeave is especially important as it solves the issue
of shading urban areas and uses clean energy. To address shading and climate change, native trees are also being planted in many Israeli cities.
The prospects for the new fabric are exciting. It can be draped atop bike paths, in children’s parks and in walking areas, according to nocamels. Many municipalities in Israel are planning on adopting LumiWeave, using it to shade their parks.
Many future uses
The new Tel Aviv Light Rail is also interested in installing the fabric at the rail stations. As there is also use for the fabric in outdoor sitting areas of restaurants and hotels, Green has developed a LumiWeave parasol.
“They will have shade and then at night, it will light up automatically. The workers will have full control over it. We are now developing the possibility of controlling it from the phone — we’re creating an application,” Green told nocamels.
As this product stores light, it will work even if there has been no sun for three days. The company is now developing a material that is sensitive to light motion. This means that it will light up only when a person approaches the area and then turn off again when no one is around.
LumiWeave offers an ideal solution for urban parks and gardens. As it is such a boon for sustainability and climate change, the hope is that LumiWeave will soon be lighting up night skies around the world.
