Energy Harvesting
Friday, April 24th, 2009 by Nigel
Someone mentioned Energy Harvesting to me last night. The idea of converting the small amount of energy that’s generated from human motion into power for small gadgets and devices like phones. It’s on the way apparently.
S’cuse the pun, but I think the idea has legs, as people have already powered nightclubs by their pounding feet.
A core technique of small-scale energy harvesting is the use of piezoelectric materials. When these materials bend or stretch, they create power.
Larger scale harvesting, like the Crowd Farm proposed by 2 MIT students in 2007, could power lights and signs in train stations and other urban settings.
According to the MIT students,
a single human step can only power two 60W light bulbs for one flickering second. But get a crowd in motion, multiply that single step by 28,527 steps, for example, and the result is enough energy to power a moving train for one second.
Anyone know anything more about it?
Blogmemes |
Del.icio.us |
Digg |
Furl |
Google |
Netscape |
PlugIM |
Reddit |
Squidoo |
StumbleUpon |
Technorati |
Yahoo My Web
May 1st, 2009 at 11:09 am
I don’t know much but every time I go to the gym and watch all the energy burned I wonder why they can’t hook us up to some power plant
Please post more when you find out!
May 6th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
We need more renewable energy in the UK. Yet there isn’t enough investment to keep Vesta’s factory on the Isle of Wight open. But the government are giving handouts to keep the car industry afloat.
Sign the petition:
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/SaveVestasIOW/
June 10th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
I have researched this principle a while ago. In theory our energy movements can be harvested to turn into energy but the thing often overlooked is the technology used to capture the energy will more often take more energy to produce than will be captured during it’s lifespan so the result is in fact negative on the environment.
My website is full of useful information on all things renewable. Please take a look around if you have time
Andy Mahoney
HomeBrewPower - Renewable energy help, tips & projects~