Sainsbury's, Gloucester, UK
Sainsbury’s market of England has installed ‘kinetic energy’ plates in the parking lot of it’s store in Gloucester. The plates are an experiment with a newer energy producing technology. The plates create as much as 30kWh of energy as cars drive over them. The weight of the cars puts pressure on the plates creating kinetic energy to run a generator. The current is used to power the store and will lower the energy consumption of the market.
If the tests are successful, Sainsbury’s hopes to install these plates, and other green energy technologies in all its stores. The kinetic plates are supposed to pay for themselves in under two years, which is a lot better than many other alternative energy sources.
The kinetic plates are only one of many green energy projects that Sainsbury’s hopes to incorporate in its stores. The Gloucester market also has a rainwater collector that is used to flush toilets, and solar panels used to heat water. A spokeswoman for the market said that 100% of the hot water will be created by the thermal panels in the summer.
Imagine, kinetic energy plates being installed on all indoor surfaces and using power from our walking to light and refrigerate. Kinetic plates have also been looked at for sidewalk streets in busy parts of the country.
Comments
There is a small fallacy at work in the reasoning here, this is not ´green´ energy, but stolen energy. After all all of it was extracted from the vehicles passing through, which in turn got it by burning more oil.
Remember the principle of Conservation of Energy - the energy "generated" by this plate does not come for free, it can only come from reducing the kinetic energy of the vehicle. So unless this installed in a place when everybody is slowing down already, then it is not green - it is just another cery inefficient way to convert fossil fuels into electricity.
This is not green energy, they are stoling energy from the cars, so it's petrol based energy. The cars need more energy to move themselves over the kinetic plates than over a road.
Actual this is energy neutral technology. It is true that the energy comes from the vehicles (and pedestrians) but there is no requirement that the vehicles in turn get that energy from oil.
As many other commented, the energy comes off course from the petrol engine of the cars. 1. The efficiency of this system from petrol to electricity must be really low 2. It creates pollution right where you don't want it, in the city: Exhaust fumes plus tire wear
AgentGreen: But it does at the moment. Even if the energy comes from solar powered electric cars, this is still such an inefficient way of converting energy, that as an electronics engineer I can just cringe.
Consider, however, the vehicles are running at idle speed. With gas engines most of the energy is wasted and rolling through the plates is no more energy consuming that rolling through asphalt.
We cannot create energy, but "stealing" wasted energy for good use is still a good thing.
Same goes with solar water heating - the heat is otherwise wasted.
Why does every body here think these plates necessarily reduce the kinetic energy of the car and therefore "steal" the energy from it? Ordinarily the cars dissipate lots of energy into the road due to rolling resistance and deformation of the surface. The plates simply collect some of this energy. If they had a smaller rolling resistance than the road surface (and I see no reason why they couldn't) they could in fact save the car some gas, while producing energy.
To generate 30KWh of power requires 41HP when there's 100% efficiency in generating power. Obviously this has to come from the car from power that would otherwise be used to move the car. It is not free or particularly green since the typical efficiency and pollution from a car are much worse than a modern power plant.
That such a system is described as 'green' makes me weep for the state of science education in this country. It's the most inefficient, blackest form of energy imaginable, and it is also theft.
30 kWh, but in what time, hundred years ? Or for each car ? Hardly either.
Terrible misleading of the people. I'm not wondering who funded this new "green" innovation...
:(
It make sense only on traffic lights
"The current is used to power the store and will lower the energy consumption of the market."
Er, actually, no...
The energy consumption remains the same (you reduce it by using less energy...) - they're just getting part of their energy FOC from a different (extremely inefficient) source.
All smoke and mirrors, but it's ultra-PC, so question it at one's peril.
Everyone please read Tony's comment. He's right, and all the other comments (except Noname's and Andrew's) are wrong.
All this device is doing is the job of your car's brakes. It slows down cars by converting motion energy into electrical energy, instead of wasting it as heat in the brakes.
Please allow trained professionals the benefit of the doubt. Do you really think the engineers who designed this device didn't think it through? How would you like it if they came to your workplace and called you an idiot, without knowing the first thing about your job?
I accept your points regarding the conservation of energy, you could expand that logic by saying no energy is free as you're stealing it from the wind, sun whatever! However in the UK there are alot of speed bumps, especially in carparks. They also steal kinetic energy, but this is just wasted!
I would seriouslly doubt that driving over a flat plate that deforms/depresses by 1cm (guess?) would perceptably slow a 1 tonne car. So okay the energy is not free BUT it is otherwise wasted and it's lightly to be far too small (with respect to your car's inefficiency) to affect your mpg. As such I think this is a good move.
All novel idea's deserve to be tried out, we may just hit on one that is enormously valuable in our energy hungry world.
The positives are that, whilst probably a reasonably business orientated act of reducing operating costs, Sainsbury's is atleast:
1.) Embracing ways of reducing their impact on the environment.
2.) Investing in companies and technologies which are striving to convert wasted energy. This helps the energy industry and researchers financially, which should then benefit consumers in the long run.
When people calling themselves "electronics engineers," and "weeping for science education" are themselves so badly confused...
I weep for the minds being lost to political beliefs. Some people think that anything with environmental benefits must be a scam. Actually, most environmental policies increase efficiency and save money in the long run. This one may be worth the money, or not -- that's why it's being tested.
The kinetic energy comes from the engine of the car, which does the work of either climbing up onto the plate (if it is elevated) or climbing off it (if it is depressed). As described this isn't green energy at all, it's petrol-powered.
The same plates used with walking humans would be different. Bio-energy is fairly green. But cars are powered by petrol!
Hmm - I'm not sure why I didn't manage to see everyone else's comments before posting mine.
The plate presumably is moved downwards by the car? In this case it is taking energy from the car, and not just "wasted" energy - it will slow the car. For instance, you could imagine car needs to climb a tiny hill which then collapses under it, and it takes more energy to go uphill.
However if as theo says these are SUPPOSED to slow the cars, if they are like energy-efficient speed humps, then that seems sensible!
But do we have any reference as to how these plates work? Is it by being depressed by the car? The article is vague.
It could be very green energy if it is put somewhere where cars are braking anyway, and the plates are designed to slow the car down, say, by being a bit uphill, like a shallow speed bump that the car pushes down. Then you can think of them as regenerative braking: this energy would otherwise be thrown away as heat by the brakes.
Another similar design would be changing down ramps on underground garages with elevators that use the weight of the car to run a generator. a two ton car going down two meters could give away 2000 kg x 2 m / 3600 s = 1 Kwh.
In short, it is a very green energy, if used with cars that do not have regenerative braking themselves. But perversely, if a car is green enough to have its own regenerative braking, like most electric cars have, it does steal that energy from it, and probably less efficiently, actually throwing some of it away.
30kWh is a measure of energy not power. is this how much energy you make per car, per minute, per hour power day ...
also why not invent a machine that takes 1 ml or petrol from each car that goes past. the owner will hardly notice, and you will be able to power the store.
on the efficiency of solar power: a 100x100 metre roof will get about 10 MW of sunlight during a sunny day, you don't need much efficiency to get more energy than you need.
Sainsbury's is the name of a British supermarket chain, not an English market.
Except it isn't green. The energy comes from slowing down the car, so the car needs to burn extra fuel to compensate for driving on these plates. To make things worse, this process is not nearly as efficient as a traditional electricity plant.
This invention is clearly aimed at extracting venture capital from idiots. Nothing wrong with that. If the thing actually worked the idiots would be stealing gas money from their customers in a way that's bad for the environment.
@Oli, dropping a 1 tonne car by 1 cm only costs an imperceptable amount of fuel. You are right of course. On the other hand, the amount of energy you can harvest that way is equally imperceptable at only 100 Joule/car. If customers are entering every 10 seconds, you'll get about 10 Watts, which isn't even enough to power a single fluorescent light. To obtain the 30 kWh mentioned in the article, you'll need about a million cars driving across the plate.
When it's like put to a place where you have to brake anyway, you don't have to waste any more fuel than you would have used without the plates.
It's only a matter of placing these plates right.
Comment from Slashdot -
"30 kWh is 108 MJ. Say your car weighs 2 tons, well that's 18.1 kN of force it exerts on the ground. So your car would have to push one of these plates down a total of 5.9 kilometers to generate that much energy. Assuming that the plate only moves an inch, that's 238 thousand car/plate crossings to generate the quoted energy.."
Unfortunately, journalists have no concept of simple maths....
This is just theft. They steal the energy from the cars. The cars have to consumer fuel to power these pads.
The article doesn't mention the cost of installing the plates and how long it'll take to recover the money.
This makes no sense in any way. You can't make energy out of nothing. Any energy gained by the 'magic' plates is simply taken directly from the car, as the car is lower down when the plate sinks it uses more petrol to gain that height again and drive off of the plate.
It doesn't matter if it's on traffic lights or speed bumps it's still the same extra bit of work the car needs to do. Saying it is more efficient than your car brake may be true but you only tend to apply your brakes when you need to! If I've decided at this point I actually need to speed up then this argument is totaly mute.
This is not a green technology. Since the law of conservation of
energy states that the total amount of energy in an isolated system
remains constant. The energy "created" must come from the cars passing
over the plates. And since a normal car gets all it's energy from
burning fossil fuel, all this accomplishes is to increase the
decentralized burning of fossil fuels... Which is not good for the
environment in any way.... Sorry try again, and remember there is no
such thing as free energy. Green energy yes, free no.
/Kenneth Moelbaek
For more on the law of conservation of energy see
``en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy''
This is actually a piezo electric carpet. It works n a similar way to your self winding watch. The deformation of the carpet/crystals creates the electric energy. It has been shown to be up to 15% efficient and could go a LOT higher.
Kenneth Moelbaek,
Yes, you are correct that energy must come from somewhere, but you are wrong in where it comes from in this case. Gravity on the car is the force producing the energy, not the car itself. The engine only moves the car forward, and this system uses downward pressure to create electricity.
If the plate was at the bottom of a sloping surface in the car park, it would be OK as it would assist the car brakes by slowing the car down & not involve extra consumption of petrol. But the slope would have to be there already, and not specially built by Sainsbury's, because getting the car back up the slope when leaving the car park requires the consumption of petrol.
Hmm, maybe we should all put inductive coils out side the front of our houses and let motorists generate our domestic energy as well!
Seriously though, using speed humps to generate power seems a good idea as well, they waste energy that could be put to good use.
Interesting the number of negative comments concerning the 'theft' of petrol. As was already stated, the plates are effectively a piezoelectric carpet, which convert mechanical energy into electrical energy and vice-versa. Cars are heavy by nature of the force exerted on them by gravity, the normal (equal and opposite) force is exerted by the ground regardless of whether we are moving or standing still.
It may be like driving on sponge, which would slow you down requiring more fuel to maintain the same speed, but I have a feeling it's less perceptible than that (and you shouldn't be driving fast in a parking lot anyway; think speed bumps).
The point is there is a lot of energy 'out there' that goes to waste. This is just another attempt to grab some of it. And it seems, a very clever one that should be commended (win or lose) not derided.
That said, lots of 'green energy' doesn't seem so green once you know the manufacturing process, I hope thats not the case this time.
"There is no such thing as a free lunch"
In the case of solar panels, energy from the sun would otherwise be converted heat of the roof. In the case of rainwater collection - that water, for the most part, does make it back to water the earth. In the case of rolling cars, if the energy were taken retarding the motion of the cars at a place where they are required to slow down anyway, it would be useful. Otherwise,the energy probably is provided by the engine to "pull" the car out of or over the deflection. It is not so much a process of taking otherwise wasted energy as it is a process of "stealing" energy from the driver's car.
NOT GREEN, the cars BURN PETROL.
The math doesn't work - 30KWh is less energy than it takes to move the car over the plate, so you could, in theory, make a high-output perpetual motion machine out of this. Since nobody's mastered low-output PMMs, I'm at least rather skeptical.
It's "its", not "it's", you gits.
Call me the devil, but I think it's kinda cool!
They are generating energy by stealing it from car engines. instead of using a cleaner electric power plant, they are using dirtier car and truck engines. Can we please make Physics mandatory in school?
This technology would be great on the main stage of a strip club, especially if I could get the revenue generated by the dancer's actions. I'd basically be tipping those naked chicks with their own hard work, and it would contribute to them dancing harder to earn more. Of course there is a negative side to everything and in this case they might let thier butts get bigger to generate more power for bigger tips.. :(
Ok! So there are some Negative and wasteful aspects to this method of extracting bits of energy from moving vehicles; so would you prefer them to detour and drive around the plates? These people are going to drive somewhere regardless! Better get a Positive spin from them while the wheels are spinning and the load is right there.
I would charge the store 25 cents for the extra fuel I burned driving over their plates, or not shop there anymore. Or sue for energy theft. People this is not wasted energy that is being recaptured, its putting a heavier load on car engines and causing more fuel to be burned. This is energy theft pure and simple. Looks like the place is ripe for a new type of class action lawsuit. Thousands of customers suing for 10 dollars in wasted fuel over a few shopping trips out to make this energy capture method less than appealing. Whomever said a Physics class should be a requirement was bang on. This is the most retarded energy capture method on the planet. Lets spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to put in a system that helps cars be less efficient. Theft pure and simple, and just plain bad for the environment, and just plain wrong period.
"30 kWh is 108 MJ. Say your car weighs 2 tons, well that's 18.1 kN of force it exerts on the ground. So your car would have to push one of these plates down a total of 5.9 kilometers to generate that much energy. Assuming that the plate only moves an inch, that's 238 thousand car/plate crossings to generate the quoted energy.."
You don't know what you are talking about. Simply flexing a piezoelectric material produces a current, i.e. electricity. It is not dependent on the distance traveled, it is dependent on flexed or not flexed. Simply having the car pass over the piezoelectric mat will create current, and when it is repeated numerous times, the electricity generated can be stored in battery cells, or used directly.
And to those complaining about energy theft, did you ever consider the possibility that these mats may have a lower coefficient of friction than the asphalt they are replacing and therefore it will reduce the energy output required by your car?
As has been pointed out by numerous people here, the mats are not using your forward motion to produce energy, they are using the weight of your car. It is turning potential energy into kinetic energy, so no physics laws are being broken, your bank account isn't going to be emptied out, and the sky isn't going to fall and hit you on the head, so just relax.
Oh, yes, they are stealing petrol! And you know who else is stealing petrol? All the government ministries responsible for building roads. The coefficient of friction of the materials is so high that it is wasting petrol to move over it. My petrol is going to produce forward momentum when it could be used to power my interior lights and stereo.
The potential energy of the car comes from driving up the plate, which converts the car's kinetic energy to potential energy. All this energy comes from the petrol. Of course, the cost to the driver is very small, but buying the same amount of energy from the local electricity provider would cost even less.
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