Energy Generating Pavement Hits the Streets

Keywords: eco-technology
Source: Pavegen, World Architecture News


According to inventor Laurence Kemball-Cook a paving stone on a busy street is stepped on by more than 50,000 pedestrians everyday and he’s seen the light by harvesting that pedestrian power. Every time the rubber Pavegen stone is stepped on, it flexes 5mm and the dynamo technology stores the kinetic energy produced.

The Pavegen System could power lights, computers, automatic doors and ticket machines at tube stations information displays, street lighting, shop frontages, train and bus timetables and wayfinding solutions.

The slab glows when stepped on indicating that energy has been generated to users. Five paving slabs distributed over a section of a pavement will provide sufficient power to illuminate a bus information panel overnight.

Details:
- Retro-fitted into pavement/ flooring in either interior or exterior spaces.
- The public can actively take part in the energy saving process themselves and there is a strong visual link between the slab and a sustainable attitude.
- Depending on the application, the buy back period can be 1 year or less.

Power:
- Each slab generates 2.1 watts per hour when located in an area with high footfall. Based on a hit rate of a footstep every 4-10 seconds.
- Testing at trial sites has shown that 5 hours of walking at peak time will generate enough power to illuminate a bus stop for over 12 hours.
- 5% of the energy generated per footstep is used to illuminate the central low energy LED lamp.
- Energy is stored within Lithium Polymer batteries: opt. A: 1 battery per 5 unit or opt. B: One battery per unit. Depending on functionality of system.

Materials:
- Top surface: recycled rubber car tyres, internal components: recycled aluminium and the exterior housing is marine grade 316 stainless steel.
- Toughened clear glass with an optical film.

Durability:
- The system requires annual servicing and is designed to withstand 5 years of use equating to 20 million steps in interior and outdoor environments.
- Removable gear tray allows hassle free servicing taking just minutes.
- Engineered to withstand harsh winter conditions without corrosion.

Vandalism:
- Anti-tamper stainless steel bolts are used to prevent unauthorised personnel accessing unit.
- Shock absorbing dampeners to prevent damage to mechanism when large vehicles and high impacts affect the pavegen slab.

Installation:
- Retro-fitted into pavement/ flooring in either interior or exterior spaces.

Colours:
- Available in a variety of colours including grey, red, blue and other mixes.
- Custom branding options: To promote your brands sustainability credentials, Logos can be added to central lamp as shown or etched onto glass.

Trials will take place in several locations throughout the UK in early 2010 with local authorities, schools and airports. Pavegen was designed by Laurence Kemball-Cook who is director of Pavegen Systems ltd. Laurence worked on sustainable blue sky research lighting projects while working as an Industrial Design engineer at Eon UK plc. Pavegen is developed in conjunction with Loughborough University and Advanced leds ltd over a two year period.

Solar Powered Shoes

Keywords: green-technology

Source: eccoterre

Using the included solar cells and LEDs, any set of sneakers can be quickly finessed into surreal garden or street lighting. The kit comes in two sizes—kid and adult—and is available with white or colored (”mood-changing”) lights. Toss one on the ground to illuminate the doorway of your home at night, or fling a pair into a tree—in the spirit of shoe-tossing—to puzzle passers-by.

Both entries of this week are related to the new energy generating technology. Interestingly, both technology look at improving the walking experience of pedestrians, and transform the walking energy into electricity. This idea is great in that it not only create another way to generate electricity, but the energy generated is directly used for improving the pedestrians' walking experience, which may further more encourage more people to use walking as their priliminary means of transportation.
These two designs also call up our attention on much energy we used on lighting the streets at night. It is a inconsiderable amount of energy but for the safty reason we cannot it. Generating electricity by pedestrians themselves solve the problem of keeping street lights on all the time. Maybe we can extend this techonoly even to cars and other vehicles, build in electricity generating panel on the streets and highway so that light only turns on when there are cars passing by.