Japan Railway harvests passenger energy for fun and profit

The East Japan Railway Company is getting experimental with ways to make their train stations more environmentally friendly, and have turned to the warm bodies that fill their train seats for part of the solution. They've started installing ticket gates that generate electricity as people pass through them, harvesting the vibrations and pressure that results when people walk through the gates. It's not quite as nefarious as we were hoping for -- we think a bit of time chained to a stationary bicycle inside the train could do a commuter good -- but it still seems a pretty good idea, and we look forward to the results. Testing should last through August 11th, and most indications point to this being a fairly effective manner of getting electricity to where it's needed.

[Via Pink Tentacle]

[Arthur @ Aug 1st 2006 8:04PM]

I wonder how much electricity this can actually generate. It might just be easier to install turnstyles with generators attached.

[DarkFader @ Aug 1st 2006 8:24PM]

Can it switch gears depending on your physical strength? :)

[Vince @ Aug 1st 2006 8:36PM]

Green makes a good cover. The basic issue here is that electricity is ridiculously expensive in Japan, so even modest savings are welcome by most companies. The green angle makes for great copy on what is primarily a long-term cost savings measure. Regardless of the motivation, it's a good move on the part of JR.

[diulei @ Aug 1st 2006 8:40PM]

Isn't this what the machines in the Matrix did? Convert humans into an energy source?

[Justin Streufert @ Aug 1st 2006 8:45PM]

I'd be surprised if this generates enough electricity to power the electronics in the turnstiles.

Also, if I pass through one of these, I expect a discount on my fare. ;)

[x23 @ Aug 1st 2006 8:49PM]

i imagine it must be connected to an internal flywheel that makes the one 1/3rd turn into something a bit more meaningful. at busy stations i bet this could generate quite a bit of juice.

it's almost so obvious it's weird no one came up with it before honestly.

[diulei @ Aug 1st 2006 8:56PM]

@x23

In my experience, train/subway stations in Japan don't use the rotating...uh whatever you call those things to let/not let people in.

They're more like flaps that work like double doors (not hard to break through at all), though I see where you're going.

[noobs @ Aug 1st 2006 8:59PM]

yeah JR is too awesome to use turnstyles.

I mean seriously the bullettrain is the smoothest ride ever. They don't screw around!

But then again at 130 dollars a ticket one way they better not be fucking around!

[Deluxe @ Aug 1st 2006 9:02PM]

As a resident of Tokyo, I would like to note to you that Japanese station gates do not use turnstyles. They use two doors that open up automatically upon touch of your suica card or ticket insertion. There is no mechanical pushing done by the user other than walking.

[Sam @ Aug 1st 2006 9:04PM]

It would be better and smarter to take advantage of the escalator to generate electricity on both ways. When going down, the electricity would be generated from the downward movement of the whole escalator by the people's mass. When going up, the the escalator would move up really slow and will take back most energy from the impatient people who step with frustration, specifically from each of their downward steps!

[Matt @ Aug 1st 2006 9:18PM]

What about using this type of generator on all manual rotating doors? What about regular doors in general? It seems like there's a lot of options for this "energy harvesting" ....

[diulei @ Aug 1st 2006 9:50PM]

Ah yes, turnstyle is the word I was looking for.

[Justin @ Aug 1st 2006 11:16PM]

"Vibrations and pressure" of pedestrians is what generates the electricity, not rotation of the turnstyles. Yup, Japan is waaay too advanced for old school turnstyles.

[William C Bonner @ Aug 2nd 2006 1:13AM]

Several years ago I remember reading about health club equipment that actually fed power back into the grid from people on aerobic machines. I've yet to see any of those in the gyms that I've gone to, and yet I spend an hour a day on these machines in my local gym, and the reading usually registers between 100 and 200 watts. So I know that's only one light bulb, but if you count the number of machines, it seems that it would be a great way to reduce costs at the gym.

[David @ Aug 2nd 2006 2:22AM]

Yeah, the health club idea makes a lot more sense. Why waste all those calories?

[Oddmanout @ Aug 2nd 2006 2:40AM]

Same same and same. I don't recall seeing any turnstyles in the JR stations in the past 10 months I've been here.

If they want to reclaim wasted energy they should rig up a whole bunch of little windmills down in the track well on the express lines. The wind from passing trains is pretty strong and I'd imagine you could get back at least as much energy that way as you can from 'vibrations'...

[Ken Y-N @ Aug 2nd 2006 4:06AM]

Err, does this *really* work? As others have pointed out, ticket gates in Japan are non-contact - are they going to put a wee treadmill in place so if you run for 10 seconds you get a 10 yen discount?

However, as for inside the train; if they really wanted to save money, they'd turn the air conditioner up a degree or two. My local company claims that they are running at 26 deg C in their normal carriages and 27 deg C in the cold ones, but I'm freezing and coming out in goosepimples in short sleeves right now! I had a look at a thermometer in one and it read 20 deg C.

[z @ Aug 2nd 2006 6:43AM]

This article leading to the other subway question: Will Apple ever put one of these perpetual-mechanisms found in swiss watches in one of their iPods? Come on Apple, if you didn't think about it, yet..

[Sam @ Aug 2nd 2006 10:20AM]

Oddmanout posted:
"The wind from passing trains is pretty strong and I'd imagine you could get back at least as much energy that way as you can from 'vibrations'..."

Oddmanout, this is totally naive, because if you manage to take advantage of the kinetic energy of the air the train produces, then the train would have to consume *more* energy than what your "windmills" will produce, to retain its speed because its speed will slow down. I suggest you check the Maxwell's second law about thermodynamics...

Now the electrical motors of the train could be used as electrical breaks to convert the train's kinetic energy back to electricity to stop the train. But this might has been done already in their trains...

[NeoteriX @ Aug 2nd 2006 12:08PM]

Sam,

Chill out, tool. If you read closely, he wasn't suggesting a violation of the 2nd Law of Thermo--he was saying energy picked up by windmills would be AS MUCH as the turnstyle type devices (which seem to have little potential to generate lots of power), not "generating AS MUCH energy as that used to power the train.

[Loque @ Aug 2nd 2006 3:29PM]

All doors should have this. Seriously. Ingenious.

[omer @ Aug 3rd 2006 6:29AM]

British engineers are thinking in wider scale :)

http://arkiblog.net/blog/2006/08/02/energy-harvesting-from-footsteps-2/

[kate @ Aug 4th 2006 7:43AM]

totally agree about the gyms. I refuse to use one as it seems absurd to me that we Use power for them that could have been Generated From them!
Running machines, rowing, step,..So I bought a mini-tramp and a skipping rope instead and make sure I always walk up escalators, and fast up stairs, and skip the lift whenever I can. No point in Using Extra electricity to slim down when I could just have taken the stairs instead of the lift, and used less electricity 2x.

[Martin Brown @ Jun 19th 2007 4:14PM]

Could have treadmill generators on station platforms anyway save pacing up and down platform while waiting for train.