I thought of this one day while traveling on a high way.
What if there were small wind turbines and/or solar panels attached to telephone, light, and power poles? This would be expensive at first. But consider how many of these poles are in the city and on the highway. The amount of energy that would be generated would be huge. This energy could be stored as hydrogen once a hydrogen infrustructure is put in place. Then be used with fuelcells.
In the city the energy would not need to travel as far and the sources are renewable, also the street lights would produce there own electricity to run.
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At very best, one might be able to generate 1/4 the energy used when the street light pole is operating, considering the in-efficiencies of dis-scale.
Nown I suppose one might be able to link a group of poles to share an invertor or something, but the distance betweeen the poles would be lossy.
This is used to power emergency telephones on highways in the western US, but we get 300+ days of sun a year. Not as practical everywhere else.
that is one of the selling points for the Belmar development area in Lakewood CO. I think the little turbines on the lights are wonderful, if only because they are adding to the demand for such technology.
This is already being manufactured by an Italian company called Prastel. They are currently trying to bring this technology into the States