What if you could generate energy simply by walking? Or by boogie-ing on a dance floor? Or by driving your car on any old road?
That's the premise behind piezoelectricity. Certain crystals
or ceramic materials can generate an electric charge simply by having stress applied to
them — the stress, for example, of a person walking on or a car driving over them.
A dance
club in Rotterdam, Netherlands, has already embedded the
technology in its dance floor, and the energy harvested from patrons' moving
and grooving powers club light displays — accounting for 10 percent of the establishment's
electricity.
The best way to harness piezoelectricity on a large scale
continues to elude scientists, but some research under ways includes:
-
A Japanese
railway company is currently testing a piezoelectric floor under its
ticket gates. If successful, the floor could be used to power the gates
themselves, as well as electronic displays.
-
An Israeli company is planning
to test piezoelectric generators on a 100-meter stretch of roadway. They hope
their system will eventually be able to produce 100 KW per kilometer stretch of
two-way road and, if successful, could be applied to railroad tracks and
airport runways as well.
-
The Pentagon has explored using the technology
to harvest energy from soldiers' boots, which could reduce the amount of
batteries troops have to carry to power gear like nightvision goggles and
communication devices. Unfortunately, researchers have found that the technology takes its toll on the troops — some soldiers have complained that a day in piezoelectric
boots is like spending a day walking through quicksand.
- A Texas professor is even looking into harnessing the technology to create a self-powered cell phone, on the principle that sound waves could apply enough stress to nano-sized piezoelectric materials inside the phone to generate the energy it needs to function.
I certainly hope they figure out how to do this, though. I know some
bouncing-off-the-wall four year-olds I wouldn't mind putting to work generating
energy for the rest of us.
Photo courtesy of WATT.
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