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Energy-Generating Floors To Power Subway Displays In Tokyo
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Dec 11, 2008 02:19 PM
from the tap-your-foot-to-the-octopus-porn dept.
from the tap-your-foot-to-the-octopus-porn dept.
Jason Sahler writes "When the East Japan Railway Company (JR East) decided to invest in alternative energy sources, it only had to look to its users for the perfect source of energy. Recently the company decided to update their Tokyo Station with a revolutionary new piezoelectric energy generating floor. The system will harvest the kinetic energy generated by crowds to power ticket gates and display systems."
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Theft of services (Score:5, Funny)
Will I be compensated with lower fares for the reduction of my kinetic & potential energies, or will they just take it as profit?
ALL THE STUPID ELECTRICTY JOKES GO HERE (Score:3, Funny)
You would be shocked by the potential of this technology. It has the capacity to replace large amounts of electrical expenses. Much like you, I'd be revolted if they did not make the best use of this technology!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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The most important question is of course..... (Score:4, Funny)
How does it hold up against massive quantities of urine?
Parent
Re:The most important question is of course..... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Theft of services (Score:4, Interesting)
I think this is a pretty cool idea. I can imagine a gym being a great place to do something like this: people go there to "waste" energy (tread-mills, various exercise machines). If they can set up their machines to basically be human powered generators, set resistance based on power output, etc, they might be able to convince people they are helping save the environment. Or at least cut down their electricity costs a bit.
"You just burned 150 calories and generated X amount of electrical energy" OR "Please maintain a speed of above 5 miles per hour or the tv will lose power and shut off"
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
considering the immense cost to implement this instead of just plugging into the grid I'd be surprised if the rates didn't increase instead. Think... powering your house with solar instead of electric, but solar when it was brand new and no one had it like "revolutionary new piezoelectric energy generating floors" are currently.
And what happens when the batteries drain? (Score:5, Funny)
I can just imagine the batteries draining and the users not familair with the system getting off of a train to find there is no way to exit the gates.
Of course, they'll then stomp their feet in anger - hopefully hard enough to blink the ticket gates functional again.
Ah - innovation.
What a waste (Score:3, Insightful)
I would bet that the cost to the environment in producing these special devices, would be greater than the coal that would have been fed into a coal power plant to produce the same amount of power.
Re:What a waste (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
but you are overlooking the smug factor
Think of how much smug this will release into the atmosphere! The thick, massive smug clouds will certainly cool the Earth by a degree or two.
Re:What a good idea! (Score:5, Funny)
You're wrong, and to prove it, I'll make a supposition with no factual basis whatsoever: I would bet that the cost to the environment in producing these special devices will be far less than the coal that would have to be fed into a coal power plant to produce the same amount of power.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Just stewing this over in my brain I was astonished by the possibilities.
Human activity follows a semi-diurnal cycle and in something like a subway station your peak generating capacity would be when masses of people are using the stations, let's say from 6 am to 9 am, 4 pm to 6 pm. Wherever this technology is applied you would need a certain level of foot traffic to make it cost effective.
Imagine this on the floors of airline terminals, sports stadiums, very busy downtown areas (sidewalks in the New York b
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Did you not read the summary either?
"Recently the company decided to update their Tokyo Station with a revolutionary new piezoelectric energy generating floor. The system will harvest the kinetic energy generated by crowds to power ticket gates and display systems."
Not Just Theft of Services, Theft of Calories (Score:3, Insightful)
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I wonder how much could be generated from the bouncing that the passengers do as they RIDE the trains/subways. They aren't walking much, so the impact to them should be negligible.
Layne
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Is that necessarily true? It obviously would be if you assumed there is no energy lost during normal walking, but clearly that is not true. If it's just recovering some of the energy lost as we throw our feet into the ground so we can turn around their momentum, it might not be any harder.
If I had to guess, I might think this might actually make it slightly easier to walk, if it's like walking on springy ground. For instance, thinking about it now in my head, I think it's less tiring to walk wearing a pa
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They're trying to power a subway, not the LHC.
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They should install this at Wal-Mart.
To run the electric scooters?
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In order to generate the power, the surface has to give way a small amount.
Now, take a walk down the sidewalk for 100 meters, then walk through soft sand for 100 meters and tell me which burned more energy. Yes, this example is on the extreme side, but it does illustrate the issue.
TANSTAAFL
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Free as in beer? :-)
Deja Vu, circa 2002? (Score:3, Funny)
Is this a totally independent outbreak of imbecility, or is it related to the SD article from ~2002?
This piezoelectric idea is never going to recover the initial cost of construction and installation.
To generate real amounts of power at near zero cost, just let the people walk up the escalator and harness the power of the steps going backwards.
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Because you can only have true alternate energy sources when they cost less money than conventional energy sources?
It couldn't be that they are the alternate energy sources because they are less efficient monetarily than "conventional" sources, could it? So what if it doesn't recover the monetary investment? Things would be a lot better off it PROFIT! wasn't the sole motivation behind any decision.
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> So what if it doesn't recover the monetary investment? Things would be a lot better off it PROFIT! wasn't the sole motivation behind any decision.
How? It took energy to make those floor devices. If they don't ever generate as much energy as it took to make them, we've wasted energy. How are we better off wasting energy?
Moreover if the things are really inefficient, then it means you're turning the people's food energy to nothing. It took a lot of energy and $$$ to feed those folks. Again, we're was
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Ah, no, you don't get something for nothing. The mat must be receiving work, i.e. force times distance, so the walker must be supplying it. And how much work is that? Assume 130 pounds and one tenth of an inch for one second, that's 1/40th of a horsepower, or about 20 watts. If someone is stepping on it every second, that's 2 watts average. Piezoelectrics are not too efficient, say 5%, so we have 0.1 watts electric. If electricity costs 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, the mat is generating about nine cents
I can hear it now... (Score:5, Funny)
"The ticket will cost 100 yen and 5 jumping jacks."
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Interesting (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Just tell them about all the energy savings and cartoon birds will start flying around their heads as a giant smile grows on their face.
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Or any term. Unless the forklift fuel is free.
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The point here is that the increase in fuel consumption is, at best, exactly equal to the amount of energy generated by the tiles. This is basic thermodynamics. Considering that this isn't an ideal system (energy loss due to heat), it's never going to generate close to what it consumes.
Personally, if these devices were
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The limited amount of information I've read regarding these tiles has not mentioned the distance they must travel for electricity to be generated. However, since they have to operate without impeding foot traffic, I suspect the distance is minimal. Certainly no more than an inch. If the tile was 1 inch above the level of the
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If you're extracting energy from it, it MUST require energy to be input.
By using a low friction material for the tiles it might be possible to reduce friction to offset the energy stolen by the piezo devices, but in that case you might as well just replace your floor surface with the low friction material without the piezos for even better efficiency.
There is no free energy.
Summary Error (Score:3, Informative)
No, it will harness the POTENTIAL energy change in the compression of the floor plates by a distance D with force F. The energy lost by the person and gained by the floor (neglecting efficiency losses) would then be F * D.
Bad summary, Bad
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I only read your post because I thought you were abbreviating the F-word.
Good point, though.
Godzilla (Score:4, Insightful)
just imagine how much energy can be harvested this way the next time Godzilla rampages! Energy independence, AND the project will pay for itself in about a 40 minute feature film. Of course, then you have to rebuild it and wait for the next rampage for the new project to pay off...
It might work, at first... (Score:2)
At first, you won't notice the extra iota of compression made by your feet against the piezo-floor-plate. But next year there will be budget cuts, and some bureaucrat will crank up the device to make the floor plates just a little bit squishier to extract just a little bit more kinetic energy... a couple of budget cycles later, it'll be like Grand Central Station, covered in mud.
Tokyo Station, nuthin -- redo Shinjuku! (Score:2)
If JR East really wants to generate some power, they should redo the floors in Shinjuku Station -- the place is bloody huge, and is a combined station for five different rail companies (JR East, Odakyu, and Keio railways, and Toei and Tokyo subways). Average daily foot traffic for fiscal 2007 (only people walking through ticket stiles -- not counting people just passing through on the trains, or other foot traffic like walkthroughs or same-company line transfers) came to 2,666,598 for the whole station, an
Travelling is tiring enough... (Score:2)
How much more tiring will it be to walk on a squishy floor rather than on a rigid or resilient one?
Small quantitites (Score:2)
Of course, this way of generating energy will only have a very tiny effect.
In essence, these systems are stealing a bit of energy from the walking crowd.
Let's assume the following: The system relies only on difference in potential energy. Say the engineers were smart and constructed an elevator that converts the potential energy of the passengers into electricity with close to 100% efficiency. For every 70kg passenger this would generate slightly under 2 watt-hours, assuming that the elevator covers a dista
Re:The Matrix... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The article talks about a 25 square meter area producing 1400 kW per day.
Meep.
You lose.
Watts are not an energy unit.
My bets are on #1 (58.3 kW averaged).
To give an idea on how much power this is, it is 530 Amps under 110 V. A typical house has a 100 A circuit. So it's generating about the maximum allowed power usage for a little bit over 5 ho
Your answer ... (Score:2)
...is found in the article, in this image. [inhabitat.com]
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Sorry for labeling you a loser ;-)
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Not to mention 1400 kW is a rate of energy, not an amount. When will journalists at least realize that units are kind of important to understanding what they are talking about? I assume that means 1400 kWh, but it could just as well mean they generate 1400 kW on average throughout the day (which would be a pretty impressive chunk of money).
Even assuming 1400 kWh, I can't imagine that number is correct. That's actually a lot of power, and, if true, this system might actually make sense in certain high tra
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Say what?! Japan has only one commercial maglev line in the whole country, which runs in Aichi-ken. It's only about 6 or 7 miles long IIRC, and has a top speed of about 65 - 70 MPH. It went into service n 2005. JR has some on their test track, though, and they are really fast. But it was just last year that JR announced they plan to start commercial maglev shinkansen service in 2025. They don't have it now because, well, the maglev rail lines haven't even been built yet. China has a maglev line running betw
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Install some of the piezo-things under the train and have the train roll over the tiles, creating the energy to levitate it!!!
Brilliant!