Pavegen taps pedestrians for power in East London (video)
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted Oct 29th 2009 1:41PM
posted Oct 29th 2009 1:41PM
When we were kids, we assumed that in the future everything would be powered by tiny nuclear fusion reactors: automobiles, toothbrushes, time machines (apparently we read a lot of sci-fi from the 1950s). The truth, as usual, is more mundane than all that: some of the more promising advances we've seen in green energy has been kinetic, taking the movement of automobiles or the tides and converting it into electricity. Pavegen, for example, can be set in public walkways to generate as much as 2.1 watts of electricity per hour from the footsteps of grizzled pedestrians. Using marine grade stainless steel and recycled materials, just five of these bad boys distributed over a well-worn sidewalk should be able to generate enough energy to keep a bus stop going all night. If not put into nearby lighting, the units are equipped with lithium polymer batteries for storage. Currently being tested in East London, look for them throughout the UK in 2010. Video after the break.
[Via Inhabitat]
[Via Inhabitat]
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I expect footstep royalties.
Yeah but how easy will it be to steal the batteries? Makes or breaks it, right there.
2.1 Watts?
1.21 gigawatts?
Question is: 2.1 watts per hour!? (already been mentioned below, I know)
2.1 watts/hr is pretty pathetic. I think the tiny little solar cells on the calculators from the 80s produced more than that.
I would hope it is 2.1 watts per tile and the tiles are small. Otherwise I think you would be better off to generate power from humans in other ways, either a Matrix energy farm, or better yet mini water turbines in urinals in bars.
The ignorance of the average person never ceases to amaze me.
A Watt is a measure of energy per time.
A Joule is a measure of energy.
Unless you're measuring how fast the amount of energy it generates per a unit of time change, Watt/hr is meaningless.
Once they get this cheap enough, and more efficient, it would make a great at-home exercise system. "Walk away your power bill"
If you strapped one to my ass, it could power the entire neighborhood. That sounder better in my head; no butt sex jokes please!
EXCELLENT idea (which was first employed in MJ's Billie Jean video, btw).
Is there any reason that these cannot be employed everywhere? Airports, hospitals, malls, homes? How about capturing the kinetic energy of me plopping my fat butt into my office chair? It's all wasted energy at this point.
Because there's no free lunch. Most times these turn out to be feel-good efforts more for publicity than for any real benefit. If you do a long term cost-benefit analysis that include the design, manufacturing, transportation, installation, and maintenance, almost all the time it's much more environmentally friendly just to rely on plain old grid power. However, there are no photo ops for politicians and green advocates with the more effective status quo.
Exactly right.
How much does this cost to manufacture? How much to install? How much to maintain? Pretty simple questions. Then you run that against the what the electricity will cost buying it from the grid. My bet - this turns out to be significantly less efficient than other established "green" methods and way more expensive than other "dirty" methods.
I came on to say whaht 'Something Clever' just said. He's spot on correct.
Might as well have a camera set up that captures people walking then a screen telling them they just saved the environment but in reality just use Grid power. If you are gonna bullshit people then do it directly and not in such a round about way.
Oh and in case you think im an anti environmentalist or something: i am in favor of banning combustion engine cars and going for all electric.
Don't forget the chemical energy expended by the humans as they do a bit of extra work against gravity, due to the slight vertical displacement of the Pavegen tile as it's depressed. The cost of replacing that chemical energy translates to the manufacturing and transportation of produce, as well as losses due to the usual inefficiencies of digestion and biological energy storage. Just because the intended user of the device won't notice such small energy expenditures doesn't mean that the tile is magically "green."
It has to start somewhere, though. Maybe this technology isn't efficient enough to be as green as it sounds, but with scaled-up production and a high enough adoption rate, it could become a green energy source. If we always take the attitude of, "It's no good until it's cheaper than what we have," we wouldn't have things like SSDs, OLED panels, eInk, electric cars, etc. Somewhere, somebody has to be a first adopter for every technology, and it doesn't really accomplish anything to scoff at them.
Guy's this is a pathetic amount of energy. I believe their 2.5 W is in fact correct! Assuming a 70 kg person, and 100% efficiency (yeah right), the most energy they can get from one footstep is: 70 * 10 * 0.005 = 3.5 J.
So 1 footstep per second (optimistic) would give 3.5 W. To put this in perspective, a 10 W solar panel costs a grand total of about £100, retail. I seriously doubt this is cheaper.
And to the predictable people who say: Yeah but what about night time? I will say: Yeah but what about people walking *around* the slabs?
When will the idiotic energy-from-something-moving 'solutions' end?
SSDs had the promise of increasing reliability. OLEDs had the promise of increasing efficiency and luminosity. These systems, however, can never promise to create more energy than they consume (even ignoring the cost of manufacturing them). They exist to harvest mechanical energy, which would not result in a net gain in energy even if the system was 100% efficient. The only sensible application of such systems are in places where the energy would have gone into a form that is unhelpful to us anyway--such as putting generators on exercise bikes, or placing these Pavegen tiles in the ground at runners' tracks. The energy expended by the commuters walking over the sidewalk would have been better spent in helping them reach their destination, unless they were walking with the goal of expending energy.
"Maybe this technology isn't efficient enough to be as green as it sounds, but with scaled-up production and a high enough adoption rate, it could become a green energy source."
No, it won't. It would be much, much easier and more efficient to throw in some high efficiency LED bulbs into existing infrastructure and result in greater savings over the long haul.
Remember, not only does this thing need to be built, shipped, transported and installed, it also needs to be maintained. Plus someone has to rip out an existing concrete block and dispose of that. Not exactly a 'green' activity.
On the other hand, all someone has to do with an LED bulb (or other future hi efficiency bulb technologies) is to wait for an existing bulb non 'green' bulb to burn out and replace it with a better bulb. Energy is saved and manpower (and the related energy) is saved because of the longevity of LED lighting.
The only way something like this even comes to close to making sense is if there is and never will be an electrical infrastructure in place. However, that would only happen in out of the way places that doesn't have electricity. Which means it won't have sufficient foot traffic to power anything. So it still wouldn't make sense.
In short, this is a rather ridiculous idea that doesn't solve any problem at all except gaining publicity for the mere promise that they are "doing something for the environment". It's designed to appeal to those who feel instead of think.
1.21 JIGGAWATTS!!!
DeLorean DMC-12 FTW
DAMMIT, got to that before me :'(
In America, it would be 1.2 Jigglewatts!
And profitable.
i fail
@Joseph
You've got a typo - it's either '2.1 Watts' or '2.1 Watt-Hours / per night' but it's not '2.1 watts of electricity per hour'.
I'm glad someone else saw that too. Someone didn't pay attention in physics class at engadget. Tsk tsk.
i actually facepalmed when i read that. if you write for a tech blog you should know the difference between watts and watt-hours.
"as much as 2.1 watts of electricity per hour" -- arrgh. "Watts per hour" is not a reasonable unit; watts are already joules per second. (The fact that the error was already embedded in the article you copied is not an excuse.)
I think they are talking about energy acceleration here. 1 Watt/hour = 0.00028 J/s^2. Given enough time, it'll be the ultimate energy source in the universe :)
Exploding Sony lithium polymer batteries. Do not step here!
sony batteries....also known as the all-spark.
"2.1 watts of electricity per hour"
Watt is a unit of power not energy. And power is already Energy per unit time. So that line makes no sense what so ever.
'An average of 2.1 watt-hours' is what I think they mean, which is a reasonable thing to say.
"...and it produces a very nice white light, which is pleasing to the eye"
emm..!
'2.1 watts per hour of electricity 'its means its 2.1 watts hours are produced continuously in high footfall environments. Its a way of describing the output of the system to people who are not technical, eg for press releases! Please accept our deepest apologies for the confusion and it is no Engadgets fault so leave them alone!
Well this comment demonstrates the level of intelligence I'd expect from someone who'd come up with as daft an idea as this.
2.1 watts is a tiny amount of electricity. 2.1 Wh per day is even worse. This is a stupid idea.
Your description is even worse.
How many joules per day? 7560?
"2.1 watts hours are produced continuously" doesn't make sense either - you presumably mean "2.1 watts are produced continuously". Sorry to labour the point, but mangled science in press statements is a pet hate of mine, and "simplifying it for the layman" is not an excuse: you've gone from a statement which is only meaningful to science geeks, to a statement which is meaningless gibberish to everyone. If the average reader doesn't know what a watt is, then don't just randomly shuffle words around to bamboozle them - get your techies to give you a soundbite that actually *helps* them, like "enough power to run an electric toothbrush".
This is very cool. It would be nice to see entire sidewalks made out of these in high traffic areas.
On another note:
Results 1 - 10 of about 7,660 from engadget.com for "bad boy". (0.26 seconds)
Seriously... enough is enough.
East London!!
These should generate a fair bit of energy with the amount of running the police do whilst in chase of the people who just robbed the bank.
yeah, put them around Hackney and you're done
beat me to it!
They probably wont be around for long. Free Lights FTW!!
Lithium polymer? So how long before they degrade completely and have to replaced en masse?
They're great for a test project, sure, but imagine that you have to replace thousands of worn batteries every couple of years throughout the entire city.
The term w/h is widely used even when it is not quite correct.
For the case for to light a 1200w microwave we will need about the area of a (american) football field
Designed to power the CCTVs monitoring said pedetrians...
Did they really design these with the lights built-in? I really see no point in that other than for demonstration purposes, which makes it seem more gimmicky and less applicable for real-world use. If they meant for this thing to be ultimately practical, they wouldn't make a pretty light blink at you so that you know it's working... it would just do its job and not look like a toy.
In the video, they say that the light only uses 5% of the energy generated. 95% goes to whatever your application is. Sure the light is gimmicky and a little bit of embedded advertising, but it's not a large drain on the system.
*imagines how much energy a group of break dancers will bring
Why did it take humanity this long to innovate on alternative power sources?
This type of power source has been available for a long time. It just doesn't produce that much given its cost, so it doesn't really make sense except as a marketing exercise to non-electrical people.
Terrorist will soon be replacing these with landmines