Power from the people
Now you can recharge things just by walking around
Now you can recharge things just by walking around
Wind-up radios have turned into consumer products in rich countries too, along with wind-up torches, wind-up mobile-phone chargers and wind-up music players. But all these gadgets rely on people having to do some specific work in return for their entertainment.
So many things work with batteries, but in fact, batteries are probably the most problematic things ever made. Thats what I think about it..
Now, there is (maybe) a nice alternative.
Max Donelan of Simon Fraser University and his colleagues introducing the "energy harvester". It looks like an orthopaedic knee-brace. It tucks behind its wearer's knee and has extensions that strap around the front of his calf and his thigh. When the wearer walks, the knee's motion drives a set of gears which turn a small generator.
On the face of it, that sounds like a recipe for making walking difficult. Surprisingly, it is not.
It looks a promising invention to me and probably to many other people too. At the first sight it looks very easy to use, and when it will be finetuned that you almost don't even feel it when you wear it, it will be a big succes!
With the generators in the harvesters engaged all the time, walking produced seven watts of power. When the generators were engaged only during deceleration, however, they produced almost five watts (enough to power ten mobile phones simultaneously). Moreover, in that second case, the amount of extra energy used by walkers wearing the harvesters was insignificant, since the harvesters were absorbing energy that would otherwise be dissipated as heat—which is exactly the principle used by regenerative braking in a petrol-electric hybrid car.
On the face of it, that sounds like a recipe for making walking difficult. Surprisingly, it is not.
It looks a promising invention to me and probably to many other people too. At the first sight it looks very easy to use, and when it will be finetuned that you almost don't even feel it when you wear it, it will be a big succes!
With the generators in the harvesters engaged all the time, walking produced seven watts of power. When the generators were engaged only during deceleration, however, they produced almost five watts (enough to power ten mobile phones simultaneously). Moreover, in that second case, the amount of extra energy used by walkers wearing the harvesters was insignificant, since the harvesters were absorbing energy that would otherwise be dissipated as heat—which is exactly the principle used by regenerative braking in a petrol-electric hybrid car.
So.. Wouldn't it be great to just walk around with your I-Pod when its recharging at the same time and, more important, when you help to save the world by this way?! This is definately not the last thing that we heard about this way of producing green energy and it certainly has a very big potential, don't you think?
1 opmerking:
When everything is really as easy as explained in the article this could be a big invention.
This new way of producing green energy has great potential and I think that large companies will get in line to be the first to produce this “energy harvester”. It’s very useful and it’s green so it will become very popular in the near future.
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