Solar panels disguised as ancient Roman tiles or terracotta bricks to match the city skyline is an innovative solutions adopted by the archaeological park of Pompeii and the Portuguese city of Evora.
image: for illustration – Evora panorama by By Paolo Querci – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
… we could either keep consuming energy….or choose to respect it…
Tech Xplore writes:
Each year over 3.5 million tourists from all over the world visit Pompeii to admire the ruins left by the eruption of the Vesuvius that, in 79 AD, engulfed it together with the nearby city of Herculaneum. Some of them might have bumped into the sheep which have been recently introduced to mow the grass in the archaeological park. But certainly none of them will have seen the solar panels on the magnificent House of Cerere.
“They look exactly like the terracotta tiles used by the Romans, but they produce the electricity that we need to light the frescoes,” says Gabriel Zuchtriegel, Director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii. This solution is part of a more comprehensive strategy to turn costs into savings opportunities and to embrace sustainable development.
“Pompeii is an ancient city which in some spots is fully preserved. Since we needed an extensive lightning system, we could either keep consuming energy, leaving poles and cables around and disfiguring the landscape, or choose to respect it and save millions of euros.”
