Ricoh to Launch Wind-Powered Spectacular

In the next few weeks, Ricoh will launch a Times Square spectacular powered by wind at 42nd and 7th Ave. The sign, which will use wind-turbine technology developed by WePOWER (Torrance, CA), will be powered by 16 wind turbines and 64 solar panels. Savings of 18 tons of carbon per year and roughly $12,000 to $15,000 a month in electricity are projected.

The 47 x 126-ft. billboard will be lit by floodlights. It will feature custom-printed opaque vinyl sheeting that bears the red-and-white Ricoh logo.

Cylindrical Ricoh drum turbines, which have no sharp blades, will provide 90% of the sign’s power; the rest will come from the solar panels on the sign, which feed electricity to eight collection batteries in the sign. The turbines, it is believed, will generate enough power to keep the sign lit even after four days without wind or sun.

Ricoh’s eco-billboard was preceded by the Coca-Cola Co.’s digital billboard, at 47th and Broadway, which launched on New Years Eve and is powered by wind, offsetting the release of 1,866 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year.

WePower, which calls its eco-outdoor ad solution “windvertising,” expects to work directly with advertisers on several custom applications of its technology this year and expand in 2010. The company is also in discussions with outdoor-media companies about applying its technology in other locations.

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In addition to the sign itself, windvertising could also be applied to the turbine’s air foil blades to reflect an image, which would create a moving image.

“I always tell people to think of Windvertising as a flipbook that you played with as a child,” said Marvin Winkler, WePower’s CEO, to Katy Bachman of MediaWeek.

According to Winkler, if the nation's 500,000 billboards were to adopt Windvertising, the billboards, spinning at 10 mph, would generate 16.8 billion kWh of electricity. They could power approximately 1.5 million homes and would reduce about 5.3 million tons of CO2.