Electricity from footsteps.
With the global energy crisis and climate change, each nations tries to come up with a viable and adaptable solution, aside from using fossil fuel-based energy system that causes increase of the green house gases in the atmosphere. Renewable energy systems such as solar, hydro, and wind power is visioned to address this problem.
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Aside from renewable energy resources, I believe that harvesting from human movements could be viable and feasible energy resource. Human locomotion has been overlook as decent means of producing electricity.
According to Basu and Ganhinger (2010), a person losses energy as he walks. It is due to the transfer of his weight as he steps on the road surface. This is in a form of vibration, impact or sound. If we can tapped to this energy and convert it to a usable form such as electricity, we can have a viable energy resource that could help over-populated countries such as #China, #India, and #Philippines.
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The idea of harvesting energy from footstep was first envisioned by James Graham and Thaddeus Jusczyk in 2007 at MIT's School of Architecture and Planning. They called their project as "Crowd Farm". The project aims to create a sub-flooring system that depresses slightly when step. The generation of electricity would be attributed to the motion of depressing the sub-flooring system which is attached to a dynamo that converts it to electricity. They envisioned it as a sustainable energy resource of the future.
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There is another means of converting human footsteps to electricity. A study authored by Boby et. al., 2014 which uses a piezoelectric transducer incorporated flooring system. It is said that the proposal of utilizing footstep harvesting system is relevant to highly populated places such as temples, markets and the like. A piezoelectric transducer is a device that converts mechanical vibration to electrical pulses.
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One interesting development of "electricity from footstep" is attaching a piezoelectric transducer in the shoes' sole. In 2014, a 15 year old boy, from the Philippines, was featured in news after submitting a Google Fair entry of electricity generating footwear.
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The boy conceptualize a shoe that can be used as charge mobile phone while the walking or hiking. It is simply made of a piezoelectric transducer attached to the shoes' sole.
Thus, generating electricity from human locomotion might be unconventional; however, it possess a potential and a promising future on becoming a sustainable energy resource.
Thank you for reading this article.
@curiousson
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Very interesting read and I can't wait until a device like this hits mass production.
How much energy does it produce and how would it compare to a portable solar charger? I know it's not easy to answer this, since there are many variables at play with both kinds of chargers.
Appreciated @daan. Actually, it depends on the number and size of piezoelectric transducer you have installed. At the very least, it could charge mobile phones. Back in my college days, i've done together with my collegues a mechanical type of this system. We have produce average to 5W.
Very interesting idea. How much energy would a system like this be able to generate on a busy walkway?
Interesting idea.. I am also curious how much it can produce.
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