This totem charges phones with solar energy

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria adds new type of urban furniture to the landscape

Residents of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain) are getting new options to charge their mobile electronic devices once they find themselves out in the public spaces of their city. Earlier today the local Municipal Parking Company (Sagulpa) announced that it has installed a photovoltaic pole at the El Rincón intermodal car park. The facility lets users charge their phones or tablets sustainably.

The totem (as the installation is known in Spain) was provided by the Fundación Canaria Museum of Science and Technology and is charged with solar energy and zero emissions.

Small-scale energy independence

The facility, which represents a new type of public urban furniture, is charged with solar energy and complies with the principles of sustainability, energy independence and zero emissions, thus improving connectivity through the use of clean energy.

The Las Palmas Councilor for Mobility, José Eduardo Ramírez, valued the installation of this totem in the El Rincón car park as "an added service that is another attraction for users of an intermodal car park like this one and that goes along the lines of facilitating connectivity, in all its aspects and always in a sustainable and energy efficient way”.

The photovoltaic totem pole is part of an innovation and sustainability project that was entrusted to the Museum of Science and Technology of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria by the Ministry of Tourism of the Government of the Canary Islands. It is the second such facility to be installed in the capital city of Gran Canaria Island through this project. The first one had already been put into operation at the El Pambaso Environmental Resources Center, through the Department of Environmental Sustainability, Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries.

This project also fulfils the five axes, also called the 5 Ds, of the new Tourism strategy: diversification, digitization, dispersion, differentiation and dislocation.