Cooley Technology Powers Times Square

Cooley Group has developed an eco-friendly thin film solar powered billboard system (patent pending). In its first application, the Cooley Group has partnered with Ricoh Americas Corporation, Takara Media, Lamar Advertising, and Xunlight Corporation, to install this flexible, lightweight solar powered billboard system. The Ricoh Times Square Billboard is over 6,000 square feet and is constructed from Cooley's Enviroflex printable billboard substrate, which is integrated with thin film photovoltaic panels making this billboard the first 100 percent solar powered billboard in Times Square.

"We appreciate the support from Takeshi Watarai of Takara Media and Ben Martish of Lamar Advertising and appreciate Ricoh Americas commitment to be the first user of our new thin film solar billboard system," said P. Robert Siener, Jr., chairman of the Cooley Group.

The Cooley system integrates thin film photovoltaic panels with Cooley's proprietary flexible membrane technology, creating a solar powered, electricity-producing system. "We believe that the opportunities for this system are virtually endless. As the evolution of TFPV (i.e. thin film photovoltaic) technology advances, the integration with our flexible composites will make our products more affordable to a larger percentage of applications. We have been working on thin film photovoltaic integration for the last several years and are now introducing systems for commercial roofing, outdoor advertising, and military tents," said Jeff Flath, president of the Cooley Group.

"These lightweight systems could be installed on some portion of the 450,000 billboards currently in the United States. Each of these billboards would generate clean renewable energy to either power the billboard lighting system or would be sold back to local utility companies through net metering or feed in tariffs programs," said Bryan Rose, vice president of Cooley's Commercial Graphics business.

"Xunlight is very excited about Cooley choosing Xunlight's flexible, lightweight, environmentally friendly thin film photovoltaic product. We are looking forward to working with Cooley on this, and many other projects," said Dr. Xunming Deng, president and CEO of Xunlight.