http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/ Engadget Comments for Japan Railway harvests passenger energy for fun and profit http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2008 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/Aug 1st 2006 8:04PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/Aug 1st 2006 8:24PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/Aug 1st 2006 8:36PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/Aug 1st 2006 8:40PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/
Also, if I pass through one of these, I expect a discount on my fare. ;)]]>Aug 1st 2006 8:45PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/
it's almost so obvious it's weird no one came up with it before honestly. ]]>Aug 1st 2006 8:49PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/
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.]]>Aug 1st 2006 8:56PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/
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!]]>Aug 1st 2006 8:59PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/Aug 1st 2006 9:02PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/Aug 1st 2006 9:04PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/Aug 1st 2006 9:18PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/Aug 1st 2006 9:50PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/Aug 1st 2006 11:16PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/Aug 2nd 2006 1:13AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/Aug 2nd 2006 2:22AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/ 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'...]]>Aug 2nd 2006 2:40AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/
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.]]>Aug 2nd 2006 4:06AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/Aug 2nd 2006 6:43AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/"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...

]]>Aug 2nd 2006 10:20AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/
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.]]>Aug 2nd 2006 12:08PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/Aug 2nd 2006 3:29PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/
http://arkiblog.net/blog/2006/08/02/energy-harvesting-from-footsteps-2/]]>Aug 3rd 2006 6:29AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/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.
]]>Aug 4th 2006 7:43AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/01/japan-railway-harvests-passenger-energy-for-fun-and-profit/Jun 19th 2007 4:14PM