"Crowd Farm" to Collect Energy? 357
Cain writes to mention that a couple of MIT students would like to harness the mechanical power of large groups of people. "A Crowd Farm in Boston's South Station railway terminal would work like this: A responsive sub-flooring system made up of blocks that depress slightly under the force of human steps would be installed beneath the station's main lobby. The slippage of the blocks against one another as people walked would generate power through the principle of the dynamo, a device that converts the energy of motion into that of an electric current."
A better idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Why make it so hard? Just hook the dynamo up to the turnstiles instead.
Re:A better idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A better idea (Score:5, Interesting)
house music all night long (Score:2)
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Re:house music all night long (Score:5, Informative)
If all the exercise machines were in use 10 hours a day for a year, the gym could generate roughly $183 worth of electricity. At that rate, it would take about 82 years to pay off the initial $15,000 investment.
Re:house music all night long (Score:5, Funny)
Re:house music all night long (Score:4, Informative)
You missed one thing, that was $183 per year, not per month.
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Re:house music all night long (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A better idea (Score:5, Funny)
Man who go through turnstile sideways, is going to Bangkok.
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It is good to meet girl in park, but it is better to park meat in girl.
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Re:A better idea (Score:4, Funny)
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Why yes, I'm drinking this extra large diet coke for the environment.
Re:A better idea (Score:4, Informative)
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The people power the city huh? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:The people power the city huh? (Score:5, Funny)
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You could choose not to walk over the evil power generating floor if it upsets your delicate sensibilities. Besides, it's not like you're spending your time generating power -- you, and everyone else, are generating power incidental to what you were already doing. They're just collecting it.
Now, get back on your
Re:The people power the city huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Walk over concrete. Now walk over sand. Which one takes more effort? The mechanical motion of the floor absorbs energy that would otherwise rebound from the shoe sole, or would never have been expended in the first place.
Re:The people power the city huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
You may want to actually. As you know, energy isn't appearing out of nowhere and doesn't go nowhere.
It may be harder to walk on blocks that slightly depress as you walk on them. Sort of like walking in mud, but not that bad.
They could explain exercise is good for you, but if you're trying to go back home after a tiresome day, you may not enjoy the compulsory experience.
one problem left? (Score:2, Funny)
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If you've ever been in Boston's South Station or New York's Grand Central or any of a dozen other major urban transit hubs at rush hour... there are plenty of people there not using cars.
I'd generate a lot of energy! (Score:2)
Too bad I travel from North Station in Boston
Rock concerts (Score:4, Funny)
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Well, that would make a rather nice positive (yet self-limiting) feedback loop. If the band sucks, the music stops (or at least gets quieter). You still need to get it going. Do you give the band a limited capacitive jumpstart to get the crowd going or do you wait until the crowd starts chanting and stomping their feet to get the show going?
I have an idea (Score:5, Funny)
I have a better idea. Why not make a system that generates energy under the force of collapsing Big Dig tunnel sections? [boston.com]
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Yep. Stacks up neatly next to selling screenspace on BSODs for advertising.
Gotta love our new economy.
One possible drawback (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:One possible drawback (Score:4, Informative)
you assume bad shoes (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't want some greedy floor stealing my energy.
Oh no... (Score:3, Funny)
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a way to harness true limitless energy (Score:5, Funny)
We could power a small coutry if we installed these in pre-schools.
Another source opf poswer (Score:4, Funny)
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Looks like you're well on your way.
Noooo! (Score:5, Funny)
Visionary (Score:4, Funny)
An old idea, hardly visionary (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.joe-ks.com/archives/Roman_Slave_Ship.h
Wool carpets and fuzzy socks (Score:5, Funny)
And for fun, they can make ramps without carpeting, for sliding down. Go back up, build up a charge, discharge and slide down again. I'd be on that all day!
School Science (Score:2, Interesting)
Now one decade later we have the same idea but with people, howmuch polution will that produce (though extra repiration)? also would not the capture of all the excess heat produced by said people to heat say water (save money on heating by getting t
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1. Don't you mean KPG? Last I checked, the M25 was in Britain. :-P
2. The loophole in the problem is: Dampeners. Anywhere you install dampeners (e.g. bridges), you are already dissipating excess energy. Reconfiguring the dampening systems to rechannel th
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You're kidding me? I though that Britain had completely switched to Metric for such things? Don't you guys pump the gas in litres? I suppose I should have said MPL then. Screwy.
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Uhm. But the surface of the tire does not slide along the road unless something has gone very wrong, and most of a car's motion is maintained by inertia, so there is very little tangential force at the point of contact. Therefore a roller would receiv
Energy doesn't come for free (Score:3, Insightful)
FTA:
So let's collect energy so we can waste it?
I wonder what it feels like walking on this floor - there's got to be some difference since the energy I normally expend is only enough to hold me up. If there's no perpetual motion machine here then doesn't the energy ultimately come from my breakfast?
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Of course it does. That's the point.
I suspect the rationale is that it's using energy you'd already be expending -- if you're going to walk over the concourse, you're already applying that energy to the floor. Now they want to harvest all of the little bits as everyone walks through.
You're probably not going to use a measurable amount of more energy. It's definitely not perpetual motion.
Cheers
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Not to be rude, but I don't think that makes sense. I'm applying a force against the floor that's exactly equal and opposite in direction to the force of gravity. The energy these guys want to "recover" isn't energy that I currently expend. If I were expending extra energy then that energy would have to go somewhere now, beyond the elastic potential energy that's already stored in the rubber soles of my shoes and whatnot.
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66% of Americans are overweight by 20 pounds or more.
20 Pounds = 70,000 calories or about 300,000 joules.
300,000,000 people * 0.66 = 198,000,000
198,000,000 * 300,000 = 59,400,000,000,000 joules
And that's.. Only about 456,923 gallons of gas. A drop in the bucket.
Not surprising considering it takes about 196,000 pounds of plants to make a gallon of gasoline. So much for using humans as batteries.
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bigger fish to fry- what a stupid project (Score:5, Insightful)
The slippage of the blocks against one another as people walked would generate power through the principle of the dynamo, a device that converts the energy of motion into that of an electric current.
Ever walked in sand? It's many, many times slower and harder. So what are they going to do with travellers that are already exhausted from travel? Piss them off with a hard-to-walk-on floor. There's also NEVER 30,000 people in South Station; where did they get that number from? Let's put this in perspective: Fenway stadium, average summer weekend game, is ~30,000 people. Even at peak commuter rush hour, I think you'd be hard pressed to find even one TENTH that number of people at any one time.
The electric current generated by the Crowd Farm could then be used for educational purposes, such as lighting up a sign about energy.
Wow. Oh. Wow.
The MBTA (which is BILLIONS of dollars in debt) and Amtrak (same...) have much bigger priorities than some stupid concept like this. How about PA systems which actually work (and don't broadcast "please report suspicious packages, safety is our NUMBER ONE PRIORITY!" every 2 minutes), bus fareboxes which work in cold weather, online lookup+refilling of Charliecard balances, integration of Charliecards into the parking garages, or online bus status? (the busses have been equipped for years with such a capability.)
Or even the "signaling" systems in the orange line which are constantly broken, or replacing more cars on the green line (the newer cars use much more efficient motors which are also capable of regenerative braking), same for the red line. The entire orange and blue lines are also non-regenerative braking as well.
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What would be the payback time? How long would it take to "make" enough power to pay for the floor?
Or even better how long would it take to make enough power to make up for the power it took to make the floor?
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Two words:
Government Program
hell no! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet another silly energy article (Score:5, Insightful)
Or how about better ideas? (Score:2)
Put Solar panels on all the roofs in Boston.
Re:Yet another silly energy article (Score:5, Funny)
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Life follows Art (Score:2)
I for one welcome our new huge-spherical-stone-balls-heading-right-for-us masters.
Energy isn't free (Score:2)
If people have to step on a somewhat soft floor to produce this energy, they will expend a certain amount more energy walking than normal. Now, sure, if this is done in your average American city, that isn't a bad thing, the average American could afford to do a bit more exercise.
It's also not likely to be a very energy-efficient energy collection system, for every ten joules of energy expended walking on the squishy platform I'd be surprise to hear of one joule of energy collected.
System won't work... (Score:2)
I was just thinking along those same lines, then I came to the conclusion that this will fail in at least one of a few ways:
Already Done (kind of) in Britain (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Already Done (kind of) in Britain (Score:5, Insightful)
They're overlooking something (Score:4, Insightful)
The real engineering trick with this design is explaining to the people that they're not just rats on a treadmill. That's not an easy problem for MIT kids to solve on their slide rules...
Especially if they're going to put systems like this in "crowd" areas - crowds aren't only composed of healthy adults, they also contain children, disabled people, etc. How hard would it be to push a wheelchair across this thing?
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It's all about degree of added difficulty, and marketing.
-Zipwow
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I don't buy it (Score:2)
CommuterCise (Score:2)
They should outfit the vehicles with exercise bikes with dynamos. Pay people to pedal everyone to work, instead of the pedalers paying for the ride. Watch the energy costs go down, and watch the obesity problems go down, too. Then watch more people bike to work on a freerunning bicycle, except in bad weather.
Then make people pay penalties for being over the average weight, and the entire system finds its optimum lean efficiency.
Ultimate Weight Loss Tool!!! (Score:2)
I would do it differently (Score:2, Interesting)
Nice, but... (Score:2)
If it's not very efficient, the solution had better look something like a cheap and durable mat that converts footsteps directly into electric energy. If it's more complex, for example requiring a fancy hydraulic system, then it had better be a lot more efficient or else the cost will likely turn out to be prohibitive.
Let's get (somewhat) practical... (Score:3, Interesting)
And when the snow comes in winter, when the floor is wet and/or icy, people will be falling all over the place increasing their energy donation to the system. <sarcasm>grin</sarcasm>
But seriously, just how much would it COST to build, install, and maintain a floor-wide energy absorbing system? May I suggest they put these panels under the stairs, instead? Especially on the stairs going DOWN. Take advantage of the energy of the crowds where the investment is smallest and the payback is the greatest. This could even be developed as an after-market item and installed ANYWHERE, without having to modify existing infrastructure. i.e. place meta-steps on top of the existing steps and then wire the meta-steps together.
MIT plagiarism (Score:5, Informative)
Reason why it won't be feasible: (Score:3, Insightful)
Reason why this flooring system won't be feasible:
1. Cost: flooring alone costs up to 200 $/sf for tiling installed in public areas, not to mention cost of this type of floor proposed.
2. Feasibility: There is going to be a lot of mechanical devices, lots of wiring, a computer system, moving parts, shifting parts, all of which will need to be maintained.
3. Serviceability: The flooring will have to have some sort of diagnosis features as well maintenance access much like escalators probably. What happens when someone spills fluids, tracks in dirt, sand, drops paper clips into the joints, etc.? How about the physical surface cleaning requirements, will the floor be able to be cleaned waxed with conventional equipment?
4. Aesthetics: Probably a major factor, is the deflections of the flooring, even if somehow minimized, people can still feel minute deflections. This is true in the design of buildings where the limiting design factor for a floor is not the dead and live loading conditions but the deflection criteria. You don't want people vibrating when someone walks past, the same will most likely be true on this flooring.
They are not trying to generate power! (Score:4, Insightful)
These inventors are not trying to produce power on a commercial or even residential scale. They are creating an innovative urban design tool. Once you beyond all the silly slashdot pseudo physicists panning an idea they do not understand or even bother to read about, this is actually a great concept.
First, it has a wonderful potential to enlighten and enthrall children. I know when I was 8, I would have loved running across a floor and seeing something happen. Where's the wonder? The curiosity? Wouldn't you think it was neat (even today) to sit on a subway car and see an LCD light power-up? That's one of the projects they described in the artile. Or a public art project that changes based on the number of people nearby? Concerts are only the beginning. Think of that silly Dance-Dance-Revolution game that all the kiddies these days are playing. I wonder what some game developer could do with this idea? Maybe a monument to some tragedy? When you step across some empty space a little light flickers somewhere in the distance.... not lit by a sensor, but by you. I don't know, maybe I'm just a romantic, but this seems like a cool idea for creative artistic types to run with.
My second point is a little more serious. As an energy professional, I'm fascinated by the idea of combining lots of small, discrete sources of energy and combining them into a cohesive whole. One of the more interesting developments in the energy industry (and let me make clear, I am a lawyer, not an engineer) has been the development of the tidal power industry. Sure, there are a few working prototypes (rather like this floor) that generate some level of power, but are not even close to being cost effective. And there are some places (think the Bay of Fundy) where massive wave power makes power generation relatively trivial.
But to my mind, the most interesting tidal projects are relatively passive ocean-based technologies that rely on small changes in the current or tides to generate power from a number of relatively small discrete events -- rather like a thousand people moving over a floor. Micro-wind turbines are similar.
And it may be old hat now, but a few years ago it was considered quite the energy challenge to hook up a bunch of discrete wind turbines or other generation sources and regulate the voltage properly to generate usable power. Isn't that essentially what these people are doing?
Don't get me wrong -- I know the floor idea is a novelty trick. But it's a cool novelty trick and maybe, perhaps, someday will become more. Who knows? But this is not some vaporware project or some company trying to drum up its stock price. Save the venom for someone who deserves it.
Tiles? (Score:5, Insightful)
When walking on a hard surface, the energy of each step is dissipated in the form of vibration, sound, and heat, most of which is absorbed by your legs. Walking on a slightly softer (not sand soft, though) surface, allows the surface to depress slightly, which absorbs most of the impact. The reason walking on sand is much harder than walking on a hard surface is that the sand moves out of the way when you push against it, causing you to exert more muscle effort to take the same size step. On a soft surface that has the proper "springiness", the floor won't move out of the way as much. The combination of springy floor and floors that bend slightly on every step is exceedingly comfortable to walk on. Ask anyone who's walked on one of those horizontal escalators in airports with the rubber belt instead of the escalator steps (I know there are some in O'Hare airport; I'm sure there are other places, too). You feel positively lighter.
If we attached hundreds of tiny piezoelectric devices per square foot on the underside of the floor, they will be able to capture the energy in the bending of the floor. The advantage of this is that the wiring infrastructure could be printed, like a circuit board, on the underside of rubber sections of floor, each of which could be swapped out for maintenance or replacement individually. Economies of scale would be in effect, since production of each floor tile would be identical to all the others before installation. Additionally, this floor might even be *more* comfortable than standard tile, and still allows for free movement of kids, the elderly, and the handicapped.
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Yeah, and then imagine how much power could be generated by burning every tree on the planet! Thermodynamics be damned, our worries are over!
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For cars? (Score:2)
http://www.google.com/patents?id=t6QRAAAAEBAJ&dq=6 756694 [google.com]
The problem is that this device causes all sorts of problems for vehicles like,
1. increased rolling resistance (car drivers pay for the power generated)
2. motorcycles anyone?
3. increased tire wear
Humans are a better idea because all it does is cause slightly more exercise. For roads, I do not think this is such a good idea. Parking lots maybe, or drive thrus but not normal roads.
Re:If the tiles sink... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But what about the drunks? (Score:4, Funny)
Conduction, followed by screams of pain and barely-suppressed laughter.
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IIRC, there is a project in a Japanese terminal to do something similar to this using piezoelectric pads. The idea was to capture this miniscule amount of energy to power the train departure/arrival display boards. More of a novelty than something with serious practicality.
Re:Wouldn't this make it harder to walk? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wouldn't this make it harder to walk? (Score:5, Interesting)