Speed bumps to generate power

[brittosa]

UK - Sainsbury's will this week cut the ribbon on a new "people-powered" kinetic energy system, which could soon be rolled out at stores across the country. The new Kinetic Road Plates have been installed at the supermarket giant's new store in Gloucester, U.K., and will harness enough energy from vehicles driving in and out of the store's car park to power all the store's check outs. The new system, which has been developed by U.K. startup Highway Energy Systems, works using plates that move when vehicles drive over them, creating enough kinetic energy to drive a generator. The technology is expected to produce 30kW of energy an hour without causing any disturbance to motorists as they drive over the plates.

http://www.businessgreen.com/business-gree...lls-kinetic-car

[Guest]

So the checkouts power will be paid for by the people driving over the energy stealing plates.

[jaclaz]

And, of course, someone is NOT agreeing:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-...gy-kinetic-road

The store however has many more "green features":

http://www.j-sainsbury.co.uk/index.asp?Pag...amp;NewsID=1095

Today is one of those days that my math does not help me much.

One says 30 kW in an hour, the other one says that each car pass produces 0.002 kW/h, i.e. 30000 W and 2 W/h respectively .

Thus to have 30000 W produced in an hour, you have an average 30000/60=500 W in a minute, and 500/60=8.333 W in a second.

The above should mean that EVERY second 8.333/2=4.166 cars have to pass on the plate.

In typical 8 hours/day opening hours, that would mean that 4.166x60x60x8=120,000 cars need to access the parking, ALL passing on the plate.

jaclaz

[Siginet]

Sounds like a great idea.

I'll have to put one on the busy street behind my house.

Save some money on my own electric bill!