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"Crowd Farm" to Collect Energy?
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."
Why make it so hard? Just hook the dynamo up to the turnstiles instead.
I love this! If they install something like this on the streets around me I am going to send the electric company a bill for my time to generate their power ... what am I a giant hamster to them?!
-- Josh
"Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" - Pete Conrad
Now the only technical problem is getting americans out of their cars...
Use the mosh pit to power the amps! the phrase "Behold the power of ROCK" has more meaning now
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
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
I have a better idea. Why not make a system that generates energy under the force of collapsing Big Dig tunnel sections?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
This will probably make it slightly harder (and more tiring) to walk on those surfaces. The energy has to come from somewhere.
ceci n'est pas une
3 to 4 year olds.
We could power a small coutry if we installed these in pre-schools.
Space Cadet
Wow... hook one of those up to my keyboad.... Well, just my delete key would generate a few megawatts of power.
-Unresolved symbol? Byte me!
Quit trying to steal my energy. I'm fat on purpose, you insensitive clod!
Why not just install wool carpets, make everyone take their shoes off and walk around in fuzzy socks. Then, they can touch special metal plates to donate their built-up static charge to the grid.
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!
Ages ago in a sceince lesson we were asked to analyse the idea of pulling rollers on the M25 motorway to capture the energy of vehicles that ran over them, well I sort of spotted the flaw in the plan being that the car would all get sucky MPG and polute more.
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 the water from 10C to day 20->30C and reduce the strain on the A/C by lowering the Air temp+humidity) be better?
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
FTA:
The electric current generated by the Crowd Farm could then be used for educational purposes, such as lighting up a sign about energy. "We want people to understand the direct relationship between their movement and the energy produced," says Juscyzk.
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?
more of the same on Twitter.
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.
Please help metamoderate.
That will make it slightly, but measurably, harder for me to walk across that surface!
You had me at sandwich.
Wonder what'll happen when the urination threshhold exceeds the flooring capacity.
Conduction, followed by screams of pain and barely-suppressed laughter.
I believe that I saw an article on Slashdot several months ago where this kind of idea was implemented in Britain, but it was on the roads. Cars getting onto the highways would drive over large plates; the plates would move and generate enough electricity to run street lights. Not a bad idea, but I wonder if the energy return in this case would be enough to justify the cost of installation.
Love sees no species.
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?
My ancestors had this all figured out:
t m
http://www.joe-ks.com/archives/Roman_Slave_Ship.h
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Instead of making a surface where people depress some kind of dynamo, why not just capture vibrations generated from walking on the floor? That way, you're only using *wasted* energy which is normally dissipated in the form of sound, vibrations, and heat, rather than make people work to walk on a squishy floor.
A lot of comments on this in the thread. Energy is conserved but the question is where does the energy go when you walk on a normal surface. If you have a solid immovable floor the energy you impart onto the surface through friction gets dissipated as heat (slight bending of the material, compacting of the earth...). If you could "dissipate" this energy into electricity it might not be significantly harder to walk on such a surface. Also, if these are just piezos than you are basically just bouncing on what feels like slightly softer surface and I don't see that as a big problem. The practical issues however are a different story (maintenance, efficiency, cost/benefit).
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.
yes the energy has to come from somewhere, but wouldn't the plates act as a shock absorber, rather than the downward energy being absorbed by your shin, it's being depressed down. If anything, with the appropriate tension it'd almost make it easier/more comfortable to walk, similar to certain rubberized walking surfaces. less impact on your shins and knees. the energy that is being used already exists and is being wasted walking on concrete (being absorbed by the shin and knee). so the law of thermodynamics is maintained, it just converts wasted energy into useful energy.
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.
There are two types of people in the world: those who divide people into two types and those who don't.
the japanese already have such a system http://www.japanfs.org/db/1667-e
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.
~ In Trust, We Trust ~
I'm not a Troll, it's reverse psychology.
Did anyone read the article? Seriously. I know this is /., but I see 227 comments so far and two that I came across didn't miss the point entirely.
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.
Forget dance clubs- put these in child daycares and you could probably close half the power plants...
I don't think anyone in the U.S.A. could stand to lose any weight...
Instead of tiles and dynamos, which would be constantly creating an uneven surface and making things difficult for children, the elderly, people in wheelchairs, people on crutches, etc., why wouldn't you just use a rubber surface with piezos on the underside?
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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You missed one thing, that was $183 per year, not per month.
There are two types of people in the world: those who divide people into two types and those who don't.
A decent modern shoe is spring-like. It stores energy as you compress it, then gives back energy as you take off the weight.
I don't want some greedy floor stealing my energy.
The calculation is idiotic anyway. Most modern exercise bikes are "magnetic" (i.e. already have a dynamo inside and put some of the energy you generate to work against your very motion) already. One such can be had for under 400 USD.
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
For a straightforward demolition of the concept, see this article at The Register.