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Ramp Creates Power As Cars Pass
Ant wrote to mention a BBC News report on a ramp that generates power via passing cars. From the article: "Dorset inventor Peter Hughes' Electro-Kinetic Road Ramp creates around 10kW of power each time a car drives over its metal plates. More than 200 local authorities had expressed an interest in ordering the £25,000 ramps to power their traffic lights and road signs, Mr Hughes said."
Takes generating electricity to a new level of inefficiency...
I suppose it might work on a ramp going down, but level or up, and the "free" energy is coming from the gas tanks of the drivers.
Jerry
http://www.cyvin.org/
Ramp up production, but make sure you have an exit strategy.
Sounds like a bright idea!
No way I would avoid any roads with these, that energy the ramp "creates" it is really sapping from the vehicle. Heres an idea, since I was already taxed for purchasing the gas USE THAT MONEY TO POWER THE LIGHTS.
Great, a ramp that's powered by the gasoline in my truck...
Whatever will they think of next...
People should charge for the power that they produce when they drive over these ramps.
Just great. Yet another gas tax.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
And just how many cars does it take to pay for one of these ramps?
...'cos what's going to happen if they install enough of them is that cars will have to use more gas to get over them all, hence all you're doing is using fossil fuels instead of grid electricity - which could be from low-emission nuclear power. So in the end, it's not a very green solution.
Obviously the energy for the ramp is coming from the forward motion of the car pushing up the ramp, slowing the car, causing it to use more fuel.
So, basically, they are making people pay in gas incrementally for passing over that section of the road. A toll ramp of sorts...
I don;t know if I'm cool with that, although the idea is very cool.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
You pay for the gasoline (*petrol* in england), and the state slows your car down, recapturing the energy that you paid for!
I suggest you read Slashdot
Does a tractor trailer give it? Or would that break it?
I don't get it.
In fact, because of the inefficiencies involved, it would have saved fuel to have simply used electricity generated by a real power plant than being a vampire and taking it a bit at a time out of cars passing overhead.
These people either do not know the cost is simply being passed on to each car in terms of more fuel burned or don't care.
That's not even the bad part. Those damn government bastards have installed "friction" all over the place and it is WARMING THE PLANET. It's a plot I tell you, a plot.
Isn't this basically the same as traditonal gas-power, but the cars are using the gas? Of course I never RTFA. Nothing to see her folks, move along.
NO~, I read Slashdot because I think it's stupid.....
I wonder how long it takes to pay off a 25,000 pound piece of equipment plus installation and maintenance with savings in electricity for street and traffic lights? I'm guessing a really long time.
Is it even worth it?
when there is a red light ahead. so instead of wasting peoples gas, these things would save consumers brake pads?
so you could have a field of them that pop up some distance before each light to absorb all the wasted energy that goes into brake heat.
Although the cost would be astronomical, it would be nice to implement this on highways/roads to keep them heated during the colder seasons (ie, Northern Ontario). Snow only stays on the ground because the ground temperature is below freezing. So, keeping the roads at 1 Degree Celsius would keep snow and ice off the roads.
Also, because the ice couldn't melt then freeze and expand, this would be an excellent cost savings measure over the long term: no more cracking or pot holes (which are mainly caused by freezing water.)
The other option are solar panels, but this method might be more cost effective.
...or perhaps I should say, taxing gasoline *more*. After all, the power is coming from somewhere... you know, conservation of energy, and all that jive?
So, instead of tearing up the road, installing this infrastructure, and then paying to maintain it, why not just add 1 cent more of taxes to a gallon of gas, and earmark that money for the purpose of paying the electric bill? Seems a lot simpler. Besides, the taxes levied really ought to accurately reflect the full cost of utilizing the municipality's infrastructure... if this cost is something the bean-counters have overlooked in the past, just add it to the tax bill.
HSJ$$*&#^!#+++ATH0
NO CARRIER
Um, OK, for how long? Because the more relevant quantity that we'd actually care about is energy.
Not to be pedantic, but for something like this it actually matters (as opposed to the typical /. grammar-nazi asshattery).
Well, the users of the road pay for the electricity.
If it is placed low enough on the ramp it will be more "free" energy because the cars would need to be slowing anyway, so a small hit there would not be noticed at all by a driver. If anything, if it was at the bottom of the ramp, it would help save the driver some brakepad.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
Wouldn't it be more efficient to just siphon gas out of the tank?
It has some benifits in the long term and some.. well.. bumps in the short term.
More than 200 local authorities had expressed an interest in ordering the £25,000 ramps to power their traffic lights and road signs, Mr Hughes said.
Around 300 jobs are due to be created in Somerset for a production run of 2,000 ramps next year.
In some ways it's productive and marks a step foward for more renewable energy created from driving.. but yet it could cause more problems, as I drivers don't like bumps much anyway as it can make driving a painful and jerky experience. Having them everywhere could inevitably lead to bumpier roads in general. I do think it has more pros than cons though, and coupled with diesel based cars and these Kyoto breakthroughs and the recent concern on conservation and energy saving of late, these things could very well be a step in the right direction.
#!/bin/bash
login root
chmod 775 universe://
a number of years back (should have patented it). Replace standard paving slabs with slabs that sink slightly when stood on, and generate electricity from the motion...wouldn't create any issues of extra emissions (as this will), and would merely make your trip to the shops a little more tiring. Solving obesity and power issues all in one. Ok, probably wouldn't work practically, but is a damn sight better end-product than this.
Some intresting things here.
Yup its uses your power that you paid for.
Though if its near lights 50% of the time the lights going to be red so therefor it doesnt always use your power cause you are going to be slowing down any way.
How much wear does it put on your car.
Or possibly the most important thing. How does this effect your breaking distance if your breaking really hard. A nice bump in the road can really offset this.
Also i can see traffic lights not working on monday monrings for the first 1000 cars or so.
when you get Energy through using that ramp, it will be taken from ... .. and yes many people here got it right .. ..
.. from UK .. (this might sound bit like chekov ;) ) but .. called "Knoff Hoff", .. to the german-only speakers, who aren´t able to articulate the english term)
.. you have higher emission of CO2 .. you will see these
yes the gasoline exploded in the motor, but more directly from the impulse of
your moving car
CRAP idea
but not THAT new nor
a system like this was presented in ca. 1993 on a german show on tv
concerning popular science and experiments
- Mythbusters without being such extrem awkward -
(it´s an adaption of KNOW HOW
and that´s why it´s a crap idea
from your car because you power this system, ok it will not pay that much
when it´s your car only but when you sum all up
ramps and who ever use them to drain energy from cars, deserve to be
called energy-thieves.
These could be placed in high vehicle traffic areas (not just near traffic lights). No moving parts means little maintenance.
You'll have to drive your car on a giant hamster wheel attached to a generator for two minutes.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
Here's the inventor's website: http://www.hughesresearch.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/
There's some videos on the site, but the "Technical" section is laughably vague.
What do you base your belief that this is "wasted energy" being used?
It's only wasted if the driver would have applied his brakes turning the forward motion of his automobile into heat. This would make sense on off ramps or downhill slopes. On a flat road, however, this will convert some of his forward motion into energy that this mechanism will leach.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
That energy is coming from the cars that pass. In other words, another government tax.
OK - 5-50KW for 1/10 second isn't much - but it would light a ton of LED signs for a looonnnng time.
These guys really need to give their collective heads a shake - ~&25,000 will purchase a hell of a lot of LED lights, a battery/capacitor bank and Solar Array (OK - Britain doesn't get as much sun as some places - but its possible, OK?)
Put this one up there with the ones who think there is a perpetual motion machine.
Been there, done that, paid for the T-shirt
and didn't get it
Apparently, physics was not your major. The same goes for the clueless mods that modded you up.
how about find a way implement these on toll roads? then you could sell the power generated to collect money instead of time-wasting toll booths.
Of course taking energy from cars going up ramps is just using the gas we paid for to generate power... BUT, it could be good if used in the correct way. If these generators were placed in places where we always have to slow down -- such as at stop signs -- or if they were only turned on when approaching a traffic light that has turned red, then it would in fact help save our break pads while at the same time generating electricity. So maybe what they're saying is that they're only installing these things on ramps that lead into traffic lights or slower speed limits, so they would in fact help in slowing the car down, as apposed to stealing our cars' energy? One can only hope...
radioactive waste you're getting right now, from COAL PLANTS, which release far more radioactive material into the air, totally unregulated, than any nuclear power plant. Because there's uranium IN THE FUCKING COAL. Moron.
Over here, on the other side of the pond, it could be put to good use. In northern Canada we have very remote stretches of highway where maintaining power or telephone lines is very problematic. The obvious answer for roadside emergency cell phones and so on, solar panels, are out because of winter darkness. Tapping passing drivers for a bit of their gas to store in a battery array for a roadside emergency phone and warming booth would be pretty welcome 240 KM outside of Watson Lake, Yukon in January.
Energy doesn't just get created. If ur taking(stealing) energy from my car, I'd want to be compensated.
What, next they'll discover powering traffic lights by tapping into the neighboring house's electrical outlet?
Here's a diagram of how it works. Be sure to wipe your mind after you're done looking at it though, it's labeled "STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL".
Home Page: http://www.hughesresearch.co.uk/ with other photographs and some short & long video clips.
50kW is a big impressive number and all, but doesn't seem very useful. How much Energy does this produce per car?
So now we can give our own gas to power the devices our nanny states will put on the roads to fine us for going 2 mph over the speed limit on an empty road...
Given we're paying taxes for our cars, can anyone explain why we should (indirectly) power the traffic lights with the fuel of our own cars?
Also I've not even started discussing the costs of implementing the required hardware.
This idea is bad anyway you look at it: for drivers, for the government, for the ecology.
From the pictures, that ramp appears to stick up at least 3 inches above the road surface. I don't know about you, but if I saw anything remotely that large sticking up, I'd be hitting the breaks or changing lanes to avoid it. That could be a real danger unless 100% of the drivers were already familiar with it. I would be very surprised if they tried to use it on roads with speed limits greater than 35 MPH or so.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Here in Texas we have to go from a greater to a lesser speed comming down an offramp so you end up just not having to use your breaks as much... my only qualm is that that looks a lot like a ramp that would send my car flying at 70mph... unless it slams down realy realy fast, realy realy hard like i guess it does, but then how long would that last? Sounds like they will be spending a lot more than the 25000 pounds for this idea...
It looks to me that they are planning on using the ramps in place of speed humps. In that case the car would have been slowing down and speeding back up anyway so it isn't going to cost anything extra for the driver.
Naturally this is leaving aside the question of whether speed humps are worthwhile or not.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
C'mon people, these can be used intelligently. Like in situations where the majority of the people crossing them are preparing to stop and either coasting or braking. I don't know how it is where you live, but here there's a red light at the end of every freeway offramp. I'm gonna stop anyway!
1. Those that hate SUVs like this, heavier vehicles will press hardest on the plates and will be slowed the most. 2. Those that want toll roads like this, the toll is collected by the vehicle's energy transfer into the plates. No need for toll booths! 3. Those that want lower speeds like this, the accelleration rate will be lower. So lay the pedal to the metal, everyone! It helps the environment!
Folks here (so far) are being nice by calling the energy taken from the moving car a 'tax' or a 'toll'. My view is that it would be theft if it were implemented. Taking something of value from me without my permission is theft. It not like the energy captured is just "free" energy that would be lost otherwise. The scheme will extract energy from the cars. So, call it what it is...theft.
What about a buncha coils of wire in the roads and some magnets on the wheels/body of cars.. As cars roll by, they generate a small amount of electricity.. While it's tiny, I would think in very high traffic areas, NY,LA, etc.. It might be worthwhile..
That is exactly what I thought. My guess is you don't need much energy for the applications they have in mind. If a car creates 10 KW for a third of a second, you have one watt-hour per car, which should be enough to run a traffic light for at least 5 minutes (assumming a traffic light consumes 12 watts). Assumming there is a rechargeable battery on the light, it only needs 288 cars to pass under it every 24 hours to keep it going.
Of course the infrastructure will cost a lot. Using my original estimate of 12 watts to run the light, and assumming 10 cents a KWh, a light costs a dollar every 35 days, or about 10 dollars a year. I would postulate this system would not pay for itself anytime soon unless it is used to power several things (if you are powering 1200 watts with 28,800 cars a day, you will save 1000 dollars a year, which could actually be worth it in the long run).
Using this in slow-down zones would capture some of the braking energy from the autos, so it would not increase fuel consumption. It would be a sort of speed bump, since the ramp is being compressed/pushed down by the passing cars.
That leaves the ROI for energy costs vs TCO for maintaining something that gets squished perhaps thousands of times daily by 2 to 40 ton vehicles.
The best places for these things would be where regular power is hard to come by, such as to augment solar in cloudy (winter?) conditions. How immune is it to ice buildup under the ramp?
Pacifist paratroopers yell, "Ghandi!" when they jump.
I think the people who've assumed the purpose of this device is to "save" electricity are missing the actual use of this device. The article never mentions it, but I have to believe the use of this invention is to power traffic lights or anything else that uses electric power in remote areas where electric power hasn't been strung. It would of course be rather pointless to try to offset the tiny amounts of power that a traffic light uses with this (relatively) expensive machine. On the other hand if the total cost of this device is cheaper than bringing in electric power, then it makes sense to use it.
AccountKiller
The really frightening part is that the vast majority of the public will not grasp this concept in the slightest. They'll think of it as free energy and applaud it as it is implemented.
I wonder, why go to such extreme measures when the same money could be invested in A) a solar panel, and B) LED stoplights; a solution that would actually harness new energy from the sun rather than another system that would waste energy infused into fossil fuels by the sun over the course of many, many years.
always wanted to say that
What kind of "Air" I'll get... I'm thinking Dukes-of-Hazard stuff here... I want to be able to jump about 25ft in the air and 50 feet down the street... That way I don't have to stop at intersections, (at least the ones with the ramp power generator) I can just JUMP the intersection.
.
"WHAT Stop signs officer? I was 25 feet above them, they don't count anymore!"
At least that is what I want if they are gonna be stealing some of my speed from MY GAS and MY CAR for THEIR POWER!
YEEEEEE-HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaa.............
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
They say it generates, on average, 10kW of power each time a car crosses. OK, great, but a watt is a measure of energy over time. So, for how long does it generate 10kW of power? Is it 10kW for a half second? 10 seconds? An hour? A millisecond?
If I have a 100W light bulb, how long can I power it off of the energy generated by one car crossing this ramp? With the information given, I have no way to calculate this. The "10kW" number is completely meaningless.
Energy is measured in joules, dammit. A watt is one joule per second.
So, this ramp generates 10kW when 'active'. Let's say you have a continual stream of cars so that it is active 50% of the time (since there must be gaps between the cars). This mean it's generates 5kWh of energy per hour.
/might/ just pay for itself.
/millions/ of cars passing over it.
Assume that the standard cost for elecricity is US$0.10 per kWh. So this thing can generate US$0.50 of electricity per hour. Over the course of a year it will generate about USD4000 worth. So after about ten years it
And that's not even considering maintaining the thing. Road wear out, and they're just simple concrete. This is a mechanical device, which will have
The whole things stinks of INVESTOR SCAM.
Based on my local cost of electricity ($0.06/KwHr), and assuming a ramp generates 10Kw continuously, each ramp generates $0.60 worth of electricity per hour. Neglecting installation costs and maintenance and using Friday's currency exchange rate, each ramp would have to operate 8.4 years to recoup the initial $44300 cost. Looks to me like they are far from being cost effective.
This article (like all-too-many others) confuses energy and power (i.e. energy per unit of time). It's nonsense to talk about generating "10kW of power" "each time" something happens.
This is not a new idea, I've seen this exact idea in (IIRC) Popular Science maybe 30 years ago. The blurb talked about the same issues covered by many /.'ers such as taking energy from the passing cars.
I always thought, again like many here, that the mechanism seemed too complex for it's job and couldn't pay for itself.
If you want to invent something interesting devise a way to take energy from cars going over a certain speed. That is, if the speed limit is 55 MPH and you go 65 have the system extract energy from your car and feed it into the grid. Sure, you can go 65, but you have to press your foot down like you wanted to go 70 to hit 65.
Let me chime in from the other side of the Nay-Sayers for Electro-Kinetic Road Ramps. How rugged are these things? What kind of road debris will it take for these to jam up? What will it take for someone to try to stop their cars, and lock the wheels on the ramp. What if the ramp ices over? With our litigous society, how long of a wait will it be before the inevitable occurs...
My electrically-assisted car depends on the energy of braking to return energy to acceleration.
If the local government is STEALING power from me, then I will have to burn more gasoline.
... And for what?
Okay, okay. I get the idea, this is essentially a means by which electricty can be derived from the same energy that drives your vehicle. However... isn't this energy that would just be wasted, anyway? This thing doesn't exactly slow down your car. It's not like it's sucking power right out of your engine. This is kinetic energy combined with the force of gravity and the weight of your car, energies that would just be wasted and poured into the ground otherwise. Ten kilowatts, depending on your perspective, may or may not in fact be 'drops in the barrel' energy wise, but it's more than enough to power devices like stop lights and road signs, granted it's stored efficiently and the devices attached to it are similarly efficient.
On a well traveled road, energy that is essentially being wasted can be recaptured and used to power lights and signs for several intersections without placing any load on the local power grid. Sure, these things are pricey, but as their price decreases with time and their efficiency and output both climb, doesn't it make sense that these things just might pay for themselves? That reduces the cost of maintaining roads in the long run by cutting out virtually all energy expenses in areas that are frequently traveled - and if the system becomes efficient enough, it could cut out the energy costs for an entire community's roadways and intersections.
This isn't 'another gas tax'. This is one less reason to have gas taxes. On a highway like ol' I-69 here in Indy, a couple handfuls of these ramps could power every lighted roadside sign and traffic signal within the city of Indianapolis, with energy to spare. Higher traffic translates directly into greater energy gains. If these things are durable enough to take the punishment, they'd pay for themselves within a matter of weeks. Now let's think about even more heavily traveled roadways, like those in New York City or LA. 10 kilowatts per panel times a few thousand automobiles a day, that's megawatts and megawatts of power being generated every day. The excess could be put into the city electrical grid, however small an amount it may be by then, and used to power other things. Street lights, low-demand municipal facilities, etc... All of this from WASTE. This is an excellent idea, and I hope to see technology like this move forward.
And before anyone replies to this, no, this is not 'just another way for the government to control our cars'. I won't be concerned about that until they start installing spike strips in these things. (And with or without ramps, that could be done at every intersection anyway....) This is hardly ripping off the taxpayer, either, if a comparatively small expense saves a ton more money. Sure, right now that expense isn't small, but it'll get smaller if enough communities buy into this stuff - perhaps even going from a few thousand dollars to just a few hundred. Money in the bank, and back in our pockets, folks... No problems here.
Sounds like a bizarre gasoline tax where the government spends a pound to collect a penny.
Flush the idea down in the nearest penny house
In this house we obey the laws of THERMODYNAMICS!!!
Who is this Jimmy character, and why was he cracking corn in the first place?
You can't generate electricity without expending energy. In this case, the energy comes from the cars that are passing. Each car will be taxed a portion of its gasoline-generated (in most cases) energy. Even if it were to draw enough to cause a noticable decrease in the car's range, I think this is more palatable than toll booths or road taxes. Of course, it would never save as much money as can be generated by tolls or taxes, so in the end it will likely fail. Sigh.
There must be some way to tap into the wind power generated by all the yapping on cell phones that takes place on the road.
Such machines can only yield a fraction of the energy it steals from the car, and the car is itself not very efficient in its use of energy. Such machines are a disaster both in economic and ecological terms -- they increase the waste in fossil energy, cost a lot to install, and yield but a fraction of what they destroy.
I'm sure something as stupid will be loved by all the government executives in the world: something inefficient and counterproductive, but that *looks* like it's doing some good, and helps rob people without their noticing -- my, that's government at its best!
-- Faré @ TUNES.org
Reflection & Cybernet
This smells exactly like a posting from an employee, or worse, some PR that they hired.
Its an advertisement, not a serious post.
Obviously I think its a fabulous idea, except for the part about cars.
I thought of this years ago. My character in a champions game created these...
as documenented here (someone else in that game must've submitted this). You have to scroll down a bit.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
You need power for the lights, which need electricity, which costs money, so: you take electricity it from cars, which have kinetic energy, which they get from chemical energy (with losses) which their drivers get from money. If only there were a way for the government to get money directly from it's citizens...
At first thought, I suspect this is especially of interest at rural locations where power is not readily available. If locating power service in the U.K. is remotely like it is herein the USA, then the costs of getting power to a busy but electrically remote intersection can be brutal.
On the second note, as others have mentioned, this does constitute a tax upon the motorists who end up powering it. But, to be fair, it is the users of that intersection and that light signal who would be the beneficiaries of that specific tax too.
Wouldn't a better way to get "free" energy from cars be to put mini windmills next to highways? A car puts an awful lot of effort into pushing air out of the way...
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
If you put the ramp on descents where people would be hitting the breaks anyway, then you could convert energy that would be otherwise wasted. Anything else is, as everyone is saying, dumb.
...it steals petrol.
Brought to you by the "there is too such a thing as a free lunch, if they didn't see me nick it" department.
How high do the metal plates stick up from the surrounding road?
Looking at the photo, this could be quite dangerous for motorcycles or cars with low profile tires, especially at night.
Do road signs at least warn about the plates in advance?
I question how much energy my motorcycle and I (260 kg together) are really going to generate.
Just think how Newton feels (and all the other physicsts that have worked at Cambridge, Oxford and the other fine Universities of the United Kingdom for that matter) when his homeland fails to comprehend conservation of energy. Heck, even most Slashdotters seem to be figuring this out.
Think global, act loco
When I first read the sumary I thought it was an inline device but this actually requires the car to slow down, climb up [e.g. use engine inefficiently] and then depress.
What's so special? The "10kW" of power comes from the car engine burning fossil fuels.
I mean what next, "the alternator: a new free source of electricity!"
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Energy is measured in joules, dammit. A watt is one joule per second.
You answered your own question.
If it's 10 kW, it must average 10kJ for 1 second.
Most likely, it 100kJ for 0.1 seconds or so.
You'd need some big ass electrical buffer to handle a power spike like that. YOu just can't charge batteries that quickly, they have an annoying tendency to blow up. And a capacitor that could handle that instantaneous power would be enormous. Your electric meter doesn't measure things in J, it uses kW.
How much does a solar cell and a battery cost these days? I'm guessing less than US$44,240.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
My first gut, wet finger in the wind estimate as a thinking human with a technical eduaction is that this thing is total snake oil.
:-)
... to a rough approximation, this is constant regardless of speed, unless there is a traffic jam, because the inter-car gap is a roughly constant amount of *time* regardless of traffic speed - recall the mantra "Only a fool breaks the two second rule". Let's take that number....
.... drumroll .... 637W. For my fellow petrolheads, this is 0.85 horsepower :-)
:-)
Two issues with your approach:
1. You're forgetting the numbers are from a crazy optimist inventor who believes his own propoganda, is given to quoting unscientific data, and is trying like hell to sell his crap
2. I suspect your 50% duty cycle is way, way overestimated. My gut is that the 10kW is a theoretical peak for the fraction of a second an axle is actually passing over the ramp.
Take a different approach - let's figure out n upper bound on how much energy per car this thing could yield from first principles (reminds me of the Physics Part 1A Tripos at Cambridge, the short "back of the envelope" questions):
Suppose each axle ramps up and falls 0.1m when passing over it, that's roughly equivalent to the whole mass of the car doing so.
An average car in the UK masses 1300kg.
Gravity is 9.81 m/s^2
Total available energy per car is thus 0.1 x 1300 x 9.81 = 1275J
Now, let's figure out how many cars can pass over it in a given unit of time
1275J per car x 0.5 cars/sec = theoretical maximum output ceiling of
Average over a 168 hour week is going to be less than 1/4 of this, due to variability in traffic -> 150W or so.
Regardless of what timebase the inventor is measuring his 10kW peak over, he admits he is at only 800W on his own scale, or less 8% of what he considers maximum possible efficiency.
Applying that 8% to the above calculated theoretical maximum, we are down to a net average of 12W yeild from this thing, which is less than the heat being given off by the idle kitten sitting on my lap as I type this.
Conclusion - as we expected at first gut, total snake oil
coming soon.... government rolling roads installed in every driveway, you've got to drive 1mile on a rolling road to power the local streetlights before you can set off.
it's harnessing the wasted energy of warming your car up when its frosty!
Does it bother anyone else that they express the amount of energy generated by this thing in units of power? From TFA:
Depending on the weight of the vehicle passing overhead, between five and 50kW can be generated.
Between five and 50 kilowatts? For how long? If it produces that much power for only a couple of milliseconds as the plate depresses, that's not actually very much energy. You have to wonder how much network energy you could buy with the amount of money it costs to manufacture/purchase these ramps.
But (to the naysayers that complain this is a gas tax), if you put these anywhere cars need to brake, not just downhills but also in front of stopsigns, they would be saving you money by sparing your brakes while also doing something useful with your excess kinetic energy instead of just turning it into heat.
Basically, I would have to see the math (both electrical and economic) to see if this really makes any sense one way or the other.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Sure, some parts of the year it's sunny and beautiful, but you need the streetlights to work all year around, *especially* when it's foggy, raining, and dark. So you might need some pretty big panels.
On the other hand, these ramps probably cost a big enough pile of money that it's still cheaper to use mains power than "free" power siphoned off passing cars.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Technical issues asside. All that power can be used to run a red light cam. If they place the ramp properly they should be able to catch cars in the stale yellow zone where they know damn well the average driver cannot react fast enough to stop the car.
This should generate a cash flow that is quite profitable. Furthermore since they won't need to be hooked to the grid - they can be locted anywhere.
What is wrong with existing technology? Need power somewhere remote, why not a solar panel charging a battery? Plenty of power for LED traffic lights or whatever other uses. This ramp will cost the motorist, In petrol, and in additional maintenance to shocks, wheel alignment. Plus from the looks of thing, the Tax payer is going to have to fund the installation of these menaces. This is just another thing to make being a motorist slightly more expensive. And I am sick of it.
"Ramp Creates Power As Cars Pass"
Relevant words in title: Ramp, Creates, Power, Cars
Relevant words from above containing factual information: "Ramp," "Cars"
Article title score: 50%. Better than usual.
So what happens when a snowplow hits it?
For new intersections, where it would require only wiring between signals and ramp, maybe that is a significant savings over running underground power to every intersection. But since power has to run to all the nearby buildings anyway, I doubt it would save much there. It might only be good for out in the rural areas, where there may be a light every few miles. But if there is so little traffic that there is no power out there, there probably isn't enough traffic to justify a signals intersetion anyway, just the standard stop sign.
This really sounds like a useless invention.
Infuriate left and right
A joule is one watt for one second.
The original poster's objection is correct, 10kw doesn't tell you anything about the amount of power it produces. Your math is bunk.
If it's 10kw it could be 1 joule for 1/10000 of a second.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I'm guessing the maintenance on these things would be hellacious. It's really quite a punishing application: high-impact from (obviously) all the cars driving over it, and also heavy trucks, and then there's the fact that it'll get all wet whenever it rains (or, worse, wet and icy and salty, in some parts of the country during the winter months).
The initial, fantasy-world design of these things wouldn't last a week. If someone worked really, really hard (spending a ton of money on design, and then again on manufacturing) it might be possible to build these things ruggedly enough that they merely required acceptable amounts of maintenance. But I'm guessing that achieving "negligable maintenance" would be next to impossible.
By contrast, LED lights appear to use about 15 watts. The bulbs do cost a lot more than conventional bulbs, but also last a lot longer, cutting replacement costs significantly, and a typical city policy seems to be that any time a light needs replacing, to change the whole thing to LEDs, but not necessarily to go replacing bulbs proactively unless their road crews aren't busy doing other things.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
is that the traffic lights are hooked into the grid. A local or regional municipality might want to add traffic signals and lights for visibility to an intersection that's not near the local grid. The installation costs of this device might be cheaper than extending the local grid and offset the cost even more.
What about on sidewalks, a ramp you walk up that lowers and makes some energy? It would be less energy but if you put these on buisy new york or japan sidewalks, you could make a good amount of energy!
Yeah, that was my first concern. That ramp looks serious, I wonder if its been tested on motorcycles, scooters, etc.
Other than that it seems like a good idea to me.
I would imagine that the motivating factor for this device is not having to build new power lines to operate an intersection out in the sticks. Power is cheap, but building miles of power lines isn't.
:-)
In any case, whatever happened to solar panels and batteries? Is it really that overcast in the UK?
Also, the 10kW figure doesn't mean a whole lot. For how long does the car interacting with the device make 10kW?
10kW ~ 13 1/2 horsepower, which is kind of a lot -- definitely enough to feel the effects of as you're driving along.
How does he get 10KW out of this? That looks like an automotive alternator in the picture. Automotive alternators range from 300W to about 1.5KW, and that looks like one of the smaller ones.
A more reasonable mechanism would be to make a heavy duty rubber mat, like the ones used on railroad crossings, but with internal chambers, like a tire. When a vehicle drives over it, you'd get some compressed air. Put in a check valve, an air tank, and a small air motor driving a generator, and you'd have a rugged little power source. A hydraulic version of the system might produce more power output than a pneumatic one. The bump felt by the vehicle should be easier than that at a railroad crossing. And no big, expensive machined parts that get beaten up by traffic.
Realistically, get a solar panel, like CALTRANS uses to power much of their roadside infrastructure.
And for how long? 1uS?
I bet the static cracks from my sweater provide MORE than 10kW, for a very short amount of time. We need JOULES here...
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They talk about kilowatts, but for how long?... 1 second? 1/2 second? 1/100?
if it's 1/40th of a second as I would estimate each passing car would generate 0.069444 KWh and it would take about 50 cars to produce the equivalent of a fully charged AA rechargeable (if we take a 2500mAh battery). But I guess their marketing department wouldn't want us to learn those number first...
I object. In fact this just makes me sick even to think about. As if there's not enough to worry about what with all of the cell-phone yakking, road-yacht driving soccer moms. Now the roads themselves are going to basically mug me for a few watts of free power!??!? Have you never seen a solar powered stop light, school crossing sign, highway warning sign, etc??? They're EVERYWHERE. Open your f'in eyes! The lawsuit you'll get from me after launching me into an intersection with this monstrosity will more than negate any savings you might get from this.. FOR ABOUT 3500 YEARS!!!!! /rant
For those not familiar with the distinction, a 'watt' is a 'rate' of energy, and a 'joule' is an 'amount' of energy. To know the amount of 'watts' produced by this thing, you'd have to know how many cars were crossing it per unit time.
Like so many other tech articles, it appears that this one, too, was not written by an engineer. (For the record, IAAEE.)
*(I _am_ an EE.)
The whores get mad when the sluts give it away for free.
The author of this article is clearly not very well educated technically. We really need to know how many watt-hours are generated by a given vehicle. The instantaneous power, measured in watts, is not particularly relevant without the time duration that it's available. For example, 10KW for 1 second is only 2.8 watt-hours, (10000 watts/3600 seconds per hour), meaning one actuation of the ramp producing 10,000 watts for 1 second, could power a 2.8 watt light source for 1 hour, assuming 100% efficiency in energy storage.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
10000Watts / (40 x (60 secs/minutes x 60 mins/hours)) = 0.069444 Wh (and not KWh as I wrote above, sorry)
1.5 Volts * 2.5Ah = 3.75 Wh
I just wrote a K too many, but besides that all the numbers are valids as for the 50 cars to make the equivalent of a 2.5mAh AA battery.
rain, metal is slick when wet, this is just an accident/lawsuit waiting to happen. also, they say it could power street lights, which are only on at night, when traffic is at its lowest and would not be sufficient to power anything.
I found this site linked from 2001 Slashdot.jp artile
So the cost of operation of a traffic light or illuminated road sign would be paid directly by the vehicles using that route. That could be a solid argument for installing these even where traditional sources of power are easily available.
It would certainly be hard to argue against using these on the approach to a toll booth.
http://groups.google.com/group/misc.transport.road /msg/9698b8a6f49b84ee?hl=en&
1999 baby...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I remember in the early 80's reading about an idea for scavenging energy from cars on down-hill stretches of road. Instead of one big ramp it consisted of a grid of small rounded studs that protruded from the surface of the road. A car passing over the grid would depress the studs, compressing hydraulic oil which would then be accumulated and used to drive a generator. The inventor's argument was that it was just scavenging energy that would be wasted as heat in the car brakes.
This is NOT energy that'd just be lost. And it's NOT waste.
If they put this out on open roads or uphill grades (ramps, etc), then it IS theft.
If they put this on downhill grades (also ramps, etc), it's STILL theft. On places where people need to stop, people using regenerative braking will lose some of their fuel savings (when they're already having problems recouping the price-premium of a hybrid). On straight downhill stretches where no stopping is needed, they're increasing the wear and tear on the suspension, tires and requiring the car to expend energy it would otherwise not spend (coasting) to traverse the same distance.
All this energy is coming directly from increased fuel consumption. So it's NOT good for the environment (increased emissions and all).
So no. It's NOT money in the bank. It's money out of our pockets FOR GOOD.
Unless you want to somehow claim this device violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics....
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Thanks for being so profoundly stupid that you didn't even bother to click the article, let alone read it. The ramps are about three inches high. The up and down involved here isn't really of the magnitude you're thinking of.
Why not have a miniature version under the desk to supply charging power to small devices and give you a little workout? Imagine keeping your laptop/phone/pda/etc. all juiced up for the cost of a few calories. How many can't spare a few of those? Eh?!
I expected this the be the FIRST post... What is /. coming to?
my sig could kick your sig's arse...
What I have seen is "SLOW DOWN" signs with a speed detector and a big flashing LED panel - great for distracting drivers just as they come into a sharp bend a little too fast - powered by a combination of solar cells and wind turbine (looks like a rebadged Rutland Windcharger).
You see similar things powering weather monitoring stations, too. Up here in Scotland, if we don't have solar power (and we do have sun, a lot of the time) we certainly have wind power...
Why not have these on the sidewalk in some busy city instead?
No wasted gasoline PLUS you have to expend more energy getting from work to mcdonalds during your lunch break.
Probably provide SFA energy though...
If you are losing kenetic energy that you paid to create (eg:car, fuel) then isn't this just another tax? Sure its a small amount, but in the end you are paying for it. Of course, if they drop taxes because of no longer having to pay power on those traffic lights, I'm all for it.
/. bug #926803 - Why I can post.
Transferring the cost of operating traffic lights from the general public to become the burden of the relatively few who drive is an issue of taxation and consequently worthy of political debate. Who has decided to change existing tax structure in this manner? Was it some 'Department of Transportation'? Does such an organization therefore have the right to generate increasinglly more revenue, sapping the assets of an unknowing few "for the general good"? Why could they then not put such devices on every road, powering the state by taking the energy owned by vehicle owners? Yes, such questions need to be addressed!
"There are 11 kinds of people: those who know binary, those who don't, and those who could not care less!"
FTFA:
Android Software Engineer
This is an incredibly uneconomic way to produce power. Since the energy to do so comes from the vehicles, there will be a corresponding increase in fuel consumption/pollution as vehicles pass over it, particularly if they have to slow down. There is also the high production cost, material use, the fact roads have to be dug up to install these things, and the fact the UK roads are already in pretty poor condition. We don't need more ramps, or similar hazards. If you want to reduce accidents, waste less money on signs and speed bumps and fix the positively hazardous road surfaces. I am considering building a GPS based system that will log where my car hits pits in the road that exceed reasonable stress limits (measured with solid state vibration sensor), so that I may bill my local council for suspension damage.
The whole idea is unbelievably stupid, and un-envrionmentally friendly. It may be cheaper for a council than running mains electricity to an out-of-the-way road sign, but it is horrifically wasteful.
You do realise that electricity costs up to 5 times more in european contries?
Coming at it from another direction ...
.1m * 9.8 / s^2
It looks like it is about 10 cm high. So for a 1 ton (metric) car, that's
1000 kg *
or, if we allow just over 10 cm, approximately
1000 m^2 / s^2 or 1 kJ of _potential_ energy.
That's actually 500 kg, twice, if only one axle goes over at a time.
Math aside, it's just a tax in energy form, but it would be interesting to explore the economics in highway offramps.
Rome wasn't bilked in a day.
Combining transportation and electrical generation makes the car more efficient than just transportation alone. It's similar (in a way) to having apartments heated by "waste" heat from nearby power plants or industrial units.
We should not entertain the idea of waste when there are easy ways to reclaim it.
What would be really cool, would be to have the energy reclaimed in this way fed to a mass transit system such as electric trams. Yeah, you can have personal transport, but part of the cost is contributing to public (more efficient) transport.
Most short journeys by car are a waste of fuel anyway. If the local shop is only a half mile down the road, burning an increasingly rare fossil fuel to get there, rather than walking/cycling/taking the bus, is almost a criminal waste. At least this device would put some of that energy to public use.
All your (car) power now belong to us...
If it's 10 kW, it must average 10kJ for 1 second.
That's not the point. For what period of time does it pump out 10kW?
Most likely, it 100kJ for 0.1 seconds or so.
100kJ in 0.1s would be 1000kW, or 1GW.
Your electric meter doesn't measure things in J, it uses kW.
My electic meter measures energy in neither joules nor kilowatts. My electric meter measures in kilowatt-hours (kWh), which is how much energy you use if you use one kilowatt of power for one hour. A kilowatt hour is exactly 3.6 megajoules.
Honestly, if you have no understanding of the subject, why do you post?
especially in Scotland, where using solar panels would require seeing the sun, and therefore are obviously out of the questions.
Just an aside, but Edinburgh and now Glasgow have introduced solar-powered parking meters. Living in Glasgow I reject the "Sun myth", but clearly the new meters are true believers ;-)
This is where the serious fun begins.
me too. took me way too long to find such a post.
Well, even if the article is correctly worded in the sense of equating 10kW to power, it still doesn't say anything.
You need energy to power something over time, not power. In theory one could "generate" 10kW (of power) with the flip of a finger... it just would not last very long.
In other words, The article feels like talking about energy, but instead is talking about power, which makes no sense!
To clarify things to those not so at home in physics, here is a little reminder: Energy is power*time. If power is very high and time is very short, it's as useless as little power over a long time. Since the article doesn't mention time at all, it esentially says nothing about the energy that ramp delivers, and that would be the only real interesting figure.
I remember hearing a story passed down that someone had patented a way to install metal plates at toll booths such that as each car that passed the weight would press down on the plate generating force to power turbines etc. Anyway rumor had it the government bought out the guy because it could potentially generate so much power etc to put local power companies out of business.
-- taking over the world, we are.
I'd be pissed if my State installed this along highways (and NC's Corrupt Legislature, who recently allowed the first toll roads in this states history would do that). Otherwise, they'd have to answer for all the porkbarrel spending that has drained the highway fund and ruined the State's road system.
But I digress. People coming up ramps are already breaking, even with gravity doing part of the job. This system would place a bit of electrodynamic drag on the chassis so instead of that chemical energy being converted into waste heat in the braking system, it would be electrical power.
Any hill that is steep enough to warrant placement of a ramp in the scenario that a car would be braking anyway (no net loss to the driver), would be a severe detriment to any vehicle attempting to climb said hill. I can imagine a few places in the United States where placement of these ramps could be beneficial if placed only on the righthand side of a downward slope. Many of the streets in San Francisco and Austin, as they are fairly hilly areas for instance. Also, these cities don't face the obstacles of snow plows or salt on the roads.
peace,
-Grokent
For the cost of only a few of these things, you could change all incandescent lamps over to LED's for every traffic signal there is, including labor. The payback of cost, in electricity saved, might be only a matter of a few months.
The meaning of your Life is up to you. Mean well. -- Me, 9/11/2001
Lots of people are asking about the power/energy/cost/etc but I haven't seen any really thorough or consistent answers. I'll give it a shot.
Assume the car is going ~40km/h = ~10m/s. The ramp looks like its about 1m across.
1m / 10m/s = 0.1 sec to cross the ramp.
0.1s * ~10kW = 0.1s * 10kJ/s = 1kJ of energy transferred every time you drive over it.
Let's say some car has a mass of 1600kg. It would lose:
(1/2)(1600kg)v^2 = 1kJ
v = 1.1m/s = 4km/h of speed
In terms of gasoline, this would be the equivalent of: (energy density of gasoline = 45.7MJ/kg)
1kJ / 45.7Mj/kg = 2.19e-5kg
2.19e-5kg * 1000L/803kg = 2.73e-5 litres of gasoline. (gasoline has a density of 803kg/1000L)
This costs you (if you live in Toronto):
2.73e-5L * $0.85/L = $2.3e-5 (canadian dollars) every time you drive over it and generate 1kJ of energy.
Compare this to the cost of electricity:
$0.1/kWh * 1h/3600s = $2.7e-5/kWs = $2.7e-5/kJ (in canadian dollars)
So it may be a little bit cheaper to have you drive over the thing than to power the lights with normally generated electriciy. Except you're the one paying, instead of the city.
Let's say you drive over 10 of these in one day. What is the cost per year?
$2.3e-5 * 10 * 365 = 8.4 cents per year. Not really significant.
Interesting!
It is staggering how many slashdotter's missed the parent's point... (These /.'s don't deserve to be called NERDS).
If this thing is put in an area where people slow down, then the rate at which it is depressed is going to be very low... And whatever it charges is going to loose some charge over time even if it doesn't power anything....
Also, what causes the ramp to go back up?? If it relies on springs or a compressible material, then surely that will wear out. (Especially when 18 wheelers tread on it).
If some component of this ramp breaks, imagine what type of damage it could to a small car's suspension/under carriage.
And what about motorcyclists? Will they do a somersault over their handlebars?
On a financial note, FA states that 1 million was spent on development and that 200 authorities are interested... Even if the each buy only one, that's 25 000 * 200 = 5 million pounds! And they plan to make 2000/year... which means 50 million pounds a year expected revenue???
Con artists must live awfully well....
Let me just run through some numbers to see what makes sense. Assume a vehicle that weighs 2000 pounds (2000 pounds of force downward.) Based on the pictures, I'm going assume the "ramp" is 4 feet long and vehicles are travelling 60 miles per hour. For simplicity sake, I'm assuming the "ramp" is just an area of roadway that will sink as a vehicle moves over it. The vehicle, therefore, will be on the ramp for 45 milliseconds. In 45 milliseconds, it will drop (from gravity) 0.389 inches. The energy to move 2000 pounds 0.389 inches is 87.9 joules or 0.02 watt-hours. I think I messed up the problem somewhere ... so where does this 10 kilowatts come from?
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
They say in the article that you cannot even feel the bump from inside the vehicle. They may be some exaggeration there, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, and assume that you cannot use it as a jump if you're on a light moped. Based on this, the following assumes that the ramp requires less force to push down than your vehicles suspension. You have noticed that your vehicle pitches forward when you brake, right? your suspension will experience *LESS* wear (based on the aforementioned assumption) since the force will be applied to both front and rear wheels - instead of pitching forward, which would stress the front suspension more greatly. This, combined with the reduced brake pad and rotor wear, and the reduction of stresses placed on other components during braking, should actually reduce the cost of maintenance. They would definitely be a good idea on off-ramps, or if they only pop-up at red lights. If they're up when it's green as well, then yes, it is additional wear placed on your suspension system, albiet slight, if they are as smooth as they claim. While they would be terribly inefficient in terms of power generation from gasoline, it's better than the power generated by non-regenerative braking.
Curse on you, curse on you evil spawn you intellectually honest, sexually dishonest engineers !
..I promised to show them how up and down work, ehehe up and down *twink* up and down up and down *beavis and butthead laughter* GOD I'M SO BRILLIANT I'm so brilliant I shall kiss myself. I'm to Edison what you are to Tesla !
Why tell me WHY do you hang on every occasion to criticize an engineered device ? What are you the rulers of rulers, the guardians of thermodynamics, the followers of gravity ?
Don't you have work to do ? Do you look every now and then in the sky to see if the friggin batsignal "engineers to the rescue" from your batcave to dispel batshit ?
I worked so hard, oh so hard ! My ingenious contraption works brilliantly, so far It can turn on a few LED lightbulbs every now and then but , hey that's not the side of economics I care about *twink*
The orders were here, the media swallowed hook line and sinker and I get to meet a couple hot secretaries from the major office
I 'invented' this as a 10 year old (26 years ago), but even at that age I realised it was a bad idea.
:)
:)
At about the same time, I invented a system to take energy from the moon rotating around the earth. Figuring out why that would be a bad idea is left as an excercise for the reader, although the name 'Chicken Little' come to mind. I'm sure somebody is patenting this now as we speak though.
I really should start patenting all my 'great' ideas.
Wouldn't solar panels be a cheaper, more efficient, perhaps even sensible, solution. I know they do use them for low power roadside equipment like parking ticket dispensers. Should cause less wear and tear as well, although 2 m^2 solar panels mounted on streetlight might be a hurricane hazard in some areas.
Regards,
Tob
This sounds great for generating power where getting a power feed is impractical (and solar wouldn't provide enough or consistent enough power). I think folks are getting caught up in the fact that this is most likely NOT efficient compared to other forms of power generation. How many highways have no lights at night? (Pretty much ALL once you leave the big city). Wouldn't it be nice to have a bit of lighting around tricky and dangerous corners? I know that I'd appreciate it.
I am just back of the envelope scratching, but these appear to cost the same as about 375,000 kilowatt hours of electricity. And they introduce a new set of mechanical parts that can break down so maintenance needs to be figured in. Is it just me or does it seem the cost initially spent on the device would pay for a lanes worth of traffic lights (since you would need one of these for each direction anyway), essentially forever given LED traffic lights and electronic controllers? And that is without the additional periodic maintenance.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
How about a version for sidewalks? Biking or walking doesn't use any fossil fuels, and small inclines would provide more exercise for the, um, horizontally challenged.
1 kJ, that's 1 kWs, or 1 / 3600 kWh, thus 1 / 3.6 Wh, which turns out to be as much as ~0.28 Wh. If they only manage to get 10% out of this, which imo would be a lot, we were at 0.028, which is not so far away from the OTHER result :-)
rain and fog panels, maybe. the first of which might actually work...
I however come from sussex and in this county we obay the laws of THERMODYNAMICS
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
This is moronic.
GreasyBloater
Wondering whether the revenue generated by Britain's all-pervasive network of automatic speed cameras could be enhanced by using the ramps (or a variation thereof) to supply the electricity they require. In this manner a speeding motorist would know that some of the fantastically-expensive petrol he put in the tank went directly to producing the incriminating photos generated as he raced through the crosshairs. There is precedent here. If a sailor in Britain's Napoleonic-era Royal Navy was sentenced to be flogged with the cat o' nine tails, he was obliged to make the instrument of his punishment with his own hands.