{"id":235749,"date":"2026-04-23T02:37:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T07:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/excuse-me-is-that-solar-panel-pointing-in-the-right-direction"},"modified":"2026-04-23T02:37:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T07:37:18","slug":"excuse-me-is-that-solar-panel-pointing-in-the-right-direction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/excuse-me-is-that-solar-panel-pointing-in-the-right-direction","title":{"rendered":"Excuse me, is that solar panel pointing in the right direction?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/excuse-me-is-that-solar-panel-pointing-in-the-right-direction2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>On a bright morning, graduate student Jeremy Klotz and professor Shree Nayar walked through upper Manhattan with a tall tripod and a camera that takes 360-degree images. Their route took them to bike docking stations, which use solar energy to power their kiosks, docking mechanisms, wireless communication, and even E-bike recharging in recent installations. At each docking station, the researchers raised the camera above the panel, snapped a spherical picture, and sent it to Klotz\u2019s laptop.<\/p>\n<p>Seconds later, the team\u2019s computer vision program told them something remarkable: how much energy that panel would generate in a year\u2014and how much it could generate if it were pointed at the optimal angle.<\/p>\n<p>As it turns out, the solar panels powering the bike docking stations\u2014and likely many solar panels across New York City and other urban destinations\u2014may be leaving significant energy untapped simply because they are not at their best orientation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On a bright morning, graduate student Jeremy Klotz and professor Shree Nayar walked through upper Manhattan with a tall tripod and a camera that takes 360-degree images. Their route took them to bike docking stations, which use solar energy to power their kiosks, docking mechanisms, wireless communication, and even E-bike recharging in recent installations. At [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,1633,17,1491],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-solar-power","category-sustainability","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235749\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}