Harvesting the Energy of Crowds
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 07.28.07
Wouldn't it be great to find a way to harness all the energy expended by those shopaholic consumers who spend most of their waking hours wandering our nation's malls? Think of how much energy could be generated — the day before Christmas alone would probably provide enough energy to power several thousand homes. Well, two graduate students at MIT's School of Architecture and Planning, James Graham and Thaddeus Jusczyk, may have found an ideal way to do just that.
Their "Crowd Farm" technology would harvest the energy of people walking or jumping in urban settings by converting their mechanical energy into a source of electricity. It would work something like this: a sub-flooring system made up of blocks that depress under the force of human steps would be installed beneath a specific setting, and the movement of the blocks against one another as people walked above would produce power by turning the energy of motion into an electric current.
Needless to say, this piezo-electric (mechanical-to-electrical) device isn't meant to work in a home setting: a single human step can only generate enough power to keep two 60W bulbs lighted for one second. The intention would be to harness the energy produced by several tens of thousands of steps in a busy train station or shopping center.
Though it remains to be seen how well the "Crowd Farm" will work in practice (especially in a large setting where transducing all that energy of motion could become tricky), this is a great way to take advantage of a huge sum of energy that would otherwise go unused.
Via ::MIT News: MIT duo see people-powered "Crowd Farm" (press release), ::Gizmodo: MIT Plans to Steal Your Energy to Light Public Buildings (blog)
See also: ::Crowd Power: The Latest in Renewable Energy, ::Hong Kong Gym Harvests People-Power
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Doesn't the Mall of America already do something similar to this?
Like I saw a Travel Channel show talk about that during the winter months, the Mall of America doesn't have to turn on it's big heaters, because the kinetic energy, or whatever, of the shoppers makes the whole mall stay warm.
So isn't that the same?
This is the kind of crap architecture students (such as myself) love to fanticize about. Its all well and good for the pretty model and drawings but at the end of the day its a horrible impractical idea and only useful as a thought experiment vehicle for producing a pretty presentation.
Among the problems with this particular piece is that it would require heavy and expensive maitenence, that getting electricity from people is horribly inneficient (probably not even compensating for the cost of this infrastrucutre installation and maitenence). Perhaps the largest failing here is that it violates the laws of physics and conservation of energy! Just get your energy directly from the sun or the earth instead.
Nope, the mall of america is heated by the body heat of the shoppers themselves.
If they used this system they would still have to turn on the big heaters - they could just be powered by footsteps.
Rajio : I'm curious, how does this break "the laws of physics and conservation of energy"?
it wouldn't break any laws, assuming they acknowledge that walking on it would be very tiering. Think trying to go shopping on a tread-climber.
This is not original. Look at the May '07 Metropolis issue, Next Generation competition. The runner up was about creating energy from our walking, running, dancing.
There's no way this would generate enough energy to justify its construction. I'm willing to bet that the energy expended in building it would be greater that it's lifetime of generation.
I wonder how much kinetic energy could be harvested by putting these things under our freeways.
Another problem with this: it would use up far too much copper (or other conductor du jour) just to generate and transmit the energy. It might be a green method for generating power, but the raw materials are a major detraction.
re: fundamental laws of physics, basically you can't "create energy" so in order to gain energy from the people, they have to expend extra energy, so you're just moving the energy. Likewise if you were to try and do the same on the freeway, the highway company would get free energy by leeching off the motorists, but each and every car would require x.xx gallons per mile mile which when you add it up would probably cost more than if you were to use the same fuel to produce the electricity in the first place.
Total bullshit. Thought experiment: An athlete working hard on a bicycle or rowing machine can output about 150 to 200 watts. That's sweating, cursing, and not for more than a few hours at a time.
So put 100 athletes on 100 bikes and have them ride as hard as they can (200W) for an hour, and capture the electricity at, say 90% conversion (which is ridiculously good). You've just made 20kWh of electricity, which a coal-burning plant will generate for about $1.00, depending on the time of day. That's $0.01 per person for their hour of labor.
Human energy recovery for anything beyond personal electronics is pie in the sky until we get back to the point where horse-drawn carriages are economical.
I also call bullshit on this. That means at a cadence of a step per second, people would be spending 120W just walking around... That number's way off. It'd be like slogging through deep snow.
Hmmm....global warming is caused by PRODUCTION, says the UN!!! This would be okay, to allow people to know to use alternative solutions. A better way to do this in a shopping mall, is to CHANGE all of the stores to thrift stores. That, to me, is what's gonna help this world.
Would solar panels still be better?
The UN said, "Re-use and/or recycle!"
It's hard to believe that so many peeps still won't accept used, as being ACTUALLY BETTER than new!
Put in on stadium grandstands. Another reason to cheer more for your team, whether they're losing or winning, you'll always go home feeling good about yourself having contributed to the well-being of the environment. :-)
The thing you are all not seeing is that stepping on a floor is emitting heat as the padding in your shoes and the floor(carpet compresses) ,thus emitting its energy in the form of heat. That would help keep the malls warm ! How about venting the shoes to keep the feet cool and burn up some fat off and Reducing the heating systems need in the mall (or wherever).
I think they should study recovering to the battery of a car the mechanical and heat energy wasted by the shock absorbers. This is done by using a solenoid type generator(moving a magnet up and down in a coil) instead of a heat emitting oil filled shock absorber. This will have an even better ride under all conditions it could be an active resistance programmed by a computer. It would compensate for total weight fluctuations ,road conditions and temperature compensation ,not like thick cold oil is in shock absorbers out there now !
The thing you are all not seeing is that stepping on a floor is emitting heat as the padding in your shoes and the floor(carpet compresses) ,thus emitting its energy in the form of heat. That would help keep the malls warm ! How about venting the shoes to keep the feet cool and burn up some fat off and Reducing the heating systems need in the mall (or wherever).
I think they should study recovering to the battery of a car the mechanical and heat energy wasted by the shock absorbers. This is done by using a solenoid type generator(moving a magnet up and down in a coil) instead of a heat emitting oil filled shock absorber. This will have an even better ride under all conditions it could be an active resistance programmed by a computer. It would compensate for total weight fluctuations ,road conditions and temperature compensation ,not like thick cold oil is in shock absorbers out there now !