Electricity Can Be Fun: Transmission Tower People – and Crayola Goes Green

Don't want a transmission tower in your back yard? What if it looked like a giant person? And Crayola, maker of the ubiquitous crayon, commemorated the startup of a solar plant behind its company headquarters by adding a new shade of — what else? — green to its palette of colors.

The Land of Giants, created by a group of designers for an Icelandic design competition, tweaked the traditional transmission tower appearance to create what look like huge human sculptures with arms that hold up the transmission lines. The designers came up with several different designs and incorporated them into a sculpture park as an effort to counter the all too common NIMBY attitude toward traditional transmission towers.

And Crayola unveiled a new shade of green to commemorate the opening of a solar park behind its Easton, Pennsylvania, headquarters. It will provide enough electricity (roughly 1.9 MW) to make about a third of the three billion crayons the company produces in a year. A $1.5 million stimulus grant helped pay for the installation. Allentown-based PPL Corporation and UGI Energy Services picked up the $10 million balance of the tab to build and run the park.

Quick Take: It's Friday the 13th. We thought you could use a lift.

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