Tokyo tests power-generating floor
By Chris Gaylord | 12.23.08
Last year, two MIT students won a prestigious international design award for a novel idea: Turn footsteps into electrical energy. The proposal imagined that an Italian train station would install a special floor. As passengers raced to catch their trains, the energy in their stomps would feed through an electrical system and power the building’s lights. Cool idea, but it only existed on paper.
A year later, Tokyo is rolling out the real thing. The East Japan Railway Company will be testing “power-generating floors” in ticket gates and staircases. As people move through the gates, they’ll step on stone tiles that give a little under the weight. That slight movement is captured and turned into energy. You can learn more about the process, called piezoelectric conversion, in a Monitor article from last year.
The railway company hopes this new round of testing will help it increase the energy yield. At the beginning of the 2008, it announced a tenfold improvement in captured power per person.
These newer floors also last longer than the originals. Early prototypes wore out and could only capture a third of their original intake after three weeks. Then, designs emerged that could still pull in two-thirds of the energy after seven weeks.
A new model began testing this month in Tokyo. By February, the company hopes to announce that the testing proved another tenfold increase in the amount of power generated and that it will still run at 90 percent two months after installation.
[Editor’s note: The original version of this article misstated the amount of energy drawn from the prototype floor.]
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4. Blizno | 12.30.08
This is utter folly. To get any energy from crowds walking along floors, you have to make the floors “spongy” and make it much harder to walk long distances.
Do you think that travelers already plagued by long struggles to get from train to train will be thrilled to walk on squishy floors that make walking much harder?
Remember that nothing is free. All energy gained by this system has to be drawn from the muscles of the passengers walking from train to train. Despite the happy tone of this article, ALL energy taken from walkers slows down those walkers, and more so, because these “energy reclamation” schemes are always very inefficient.
Imagine the difference between walking from station to station on pavement to walking from station to station on sand. You will notice a huge difference in effort and time required to walk the distance. The amount of energy generated by sucking down the very inefficient human body is laughable compared to the flood of complaints received from the enraged commuters.
5. Blizno | 12.30.08
“I can only hope this break through does not go the way of the 200 mpg carburetor. No more big bus. buying up energy saving tech and hoarding it for profit of fossil fuels.”
Please. There is no such thing as a 200 mpg carburetor. The only way to reach 200 mpg with a gasoline or diesel vehicle is to reduce weight and wind resistance to almost nothing. The people telling you that sending them $149.99 will result in you receiving a “free-energy” carburetor are LYING to you!
The magical waving of hands and chanting of spells will NEVER make energy appear from nowhere. I’m sorry, but you and the rest of us have to live in the real world. There are concrete, inviolable rules about what energy can do. “Burning water”, “Free energy”, “200 mpg carburetors”, etc., are LIES. They cannot possibly work and the LIARS promoting them know that full well. Those LIARS are not on your side. They only want to suck your bank account dry.
Keep your car tires inflated to their recommended pressure. Have regular tune-ups. Accelerate gently. Combine chores to make the best use of road-trips.
DO NOT buy a four-wheel drive SUV unless you have a real reason to do so, such as having to claw across the Outback to get to your ostrich farm. If you live in an area where roads are plowed and salted, you DO NOT need an SUV!
In these ways you’ll save far, far more fuel and money than any of the scam-artists can promise you.
6. Casey | 01.07.09
Why not put this in roads and expressways.Cars rolling over would make more energy.
7. C. Schell | 01.18.09
I am cutting-and-pasting my previous Comments, which have NOT shown-up with this article … and I’m quite curious WHY this might be the case!!
I Submitted at 1:11AM 12/23/08 the following Comment:
“I believe that you have made an error in the units used in your article: you have used a division sign (”/”) where you should have used a multiplication sign (”*”). I believe that you MEANT to state the following units of energy: “0.1W*sec to 1W*sec”. Similarly, you should have stated the following: “1,400kW*sec per day” … which is a power (not Energy) term equivalent to 1,400kW*sec/day … which divides-out to a power of 16.2 Watts for a 24hr day. If one applies the same energy over only an 8hr day then the yield of power becomes 48.6 Watts. I would question whether 50W of power gathered from all the passengers of a train station would make it “worthwhile” for even the most “green-minded” of practical people!
C. Schell 12/23/08″
Not only has my Correction Comment not appeared with the article since then, but there have been NO Comments posted with this article! Why?
– C. Schell 12/25/08”
As of today (1/18/09), I now see six Comments listed … with NO sign of MY Comment, which actually clarified what was wrong with your article! You simply deleted the two numerical references to power, and then added your “Editors Note” that the amount of power “was misstated”.
The Editor can do as he/she pleases with the article. But I believe that the CSM owes its readership the benefit of UNcensored Comments … especially when those Comments are not the usual drivel, but well-thought writing that actually sheds some light on the subject at hand! I’m going to be paying a bit more attention to this practice, and see if it continues.
– C. Schell 1/18/09
8. C. Schell | 01.20.09
I applaud the CSM for finally posting my Comment of 12/23/08 … which clarifies for readers (of the original article) what was wrong with the figures given (numerically, they were probably OK … it was the UNITS which were in error). When one looks at the (actual) paltry amounts of power that are produced … or would EVER be produced … one has to wonder about the intellect of those MIT students and the East Japan Railway Company!! And one must really wonder about the committee who presented “a prestigious international design award for a novel idea”!! ;>)
Any new readers of this article and Comments would do well to read the two Comments posted by Blizno on 12/30/08. I applaud the intelligence that he shows in every statement … he took the time to say things of a general nature that I did not address. His leading statement says it best: “This is utter folly” … which it is! There are quite a few others out there that need to learn a bit more science … and spend their time on things that have a practical and useful outcome! Thanks for your attention.
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1. searchert | 12.23.08
I can only hope this break through does not go the way of the 200 mpg carburetor. No more big bus. buying up energy saving tech and hoarding it for profit of fossil fuels.