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Power walking

By William Bostwick - June 9, 2008

in Tech

This just in from the Times UK: British engineers have built a generator powered by footsteps. Bury the contraption under the floor of a building and it turns tiny pressure changes into usable energy (this guy's good for a couple of watts). They say the crowds in the London Underground's Victoria Station alone could power 6,500 light bulbs.

The idea is that the built environment is a living, breathing, moving thing. We can get energy from waves and wind, why not sidewalks? Here's a taste:

David Webb, a structural engineer at the consultant Scott Wilson, which is in discussions with Network Rail and with retail firms to install the devices, said: "It's just picking up on the fact that all structures move a bit. This technology says, okay, we can do something useful with that energy."

In addition to floors, the technology could also be installed beneath railway lines and on road bridges to exploit the energy of passing trains and vehicles.

But I think they're forgetting an untapped energy mother lode: dance floors. I mean, isn't it obvious where the inspiration for a light-generating sidewalk came from?

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matt

15 years ago

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Hey, here's an idea, what if you collaborated with the people with the photo-voltaic power generating sidewalk and put those on top and your pressure pads on the bottom in two layers? absorb all of the energy you can get right? That would work.
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matt

15 years ago

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Seriously! Putting these in roads would be the best idea for the future! Eliminate pollution-pumping electric plants and replace them with the energy road and sidewalk. No energy bills, zero emissions, and it would literally pave the road for electric vehicles that don't want to contribute to the production of greenhouse gasses by drawing power from the plants. i would jump on this idea-no pun intended.
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Jeff

16 years ago

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I wonder why they don't do this on the world's roads as well. Millions of automobiles driving over pressure generators has to add up to quite a bit of electricity.
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Greg

16 years ago

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http://www.sustainabledanceclub.com/
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