Human power production may be the future of sustainable electric generation and power saving. Everyone knows that it saves money and gas emissions to ride your bike to work but what if the biking you were doing was powering a vehicle, or the energy from your motion was being collected to power you hand held electronics or computer. The power of pedaling, sound waves, and even dancing is now being used to collect electricity and power parts if not all of the electrical needs of buildings and vehicles. One such example is the Club Watt in Rotterdam has opened as a fully people powered dance club. The technology harnesses the movement of people on the dance floor and converts it into electricity using a piezoelectric transducer to run the dance club.
This technology has also been proposed in busy areas such as train stations or other highly walked areas for its potential to harness power from passers by. The electric generation from people simply walking on a collecting surface can be implemented almost anywhere and cut down costs of electricity along with emissions. The initial club watt plan was part of a Rotterdam citywide CO2 reduction effort and has been praised for its innovation and success. A similar club opened in London England and the power surplus is being donated to the local residence of the area. These club retrofits should be implemented into new projects all over the world to cut down on emissions and increase sustainable connections in our lives. Another example of human power is the California fitness gym in Hong Kong, China. They gym collects the energy from peoples use of the machines and this power the lights and appliances of the gym. This human made power is gaining attention and could be the key to sustainable living. Instead of using coal with its environmental damaging emission properties and limited supply people can make their own power just by doing what they would do naturally. It is important that technologies such as this gain attention People need to know they have the potential to supplying their own power. By retrofitting more of our daily use products and connecting them all to the same grid people have the potential to not only save more electricity but also use our already busy lives to collect energy to be used to fuel other parts of it.
Retrofitting seems like a great resource for sustainable power. How expensive is it? If it is cost effective, why NOT utilize them in densely populated areas across the globe? Places like stadiums, concert venues and busy highways could all use such technology to cut energy costs in a major way. The major benefit to this technology would be the fact that the supply is unlimited. This is a highly creative idea that harnesses the idea that motion IS energy.
ReplyDeleteImplementing these technologies on a large scale would not only reduce the amount of energy taken from the power grid but also do wonders to address the growing obesity epidemic as it would give people a reason to exercise. If people could convert the energy they use while walking or jogging into energy they can use other places, it would give people an incentive to become more active. Energy collected from the exertions of every day life would be an excellent source of energy for low energy application. I do not think there would be enough energy for all of societies energy consumptions however.
ReplyDeleteThis is a true feat of sustainability. When people exert themselves doing any day to day activity they simply count the energy as being gone, but by collecting it on a large scale the need for massive power plants would be reduced. Obviously this would only work in places of high density, where as smaller localities would not receive the same benefits. But that is not necessarily a bad thing. Seeing the reductions in energy costs, localities would come around, and favor plans to increase their density as opposed to land area. A true win win situation of battling both sprawl and CO2 emissions.
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