Just finished writing about the Eco-nightclub and here’s one more application of the foot powered energy! Shoo away the idea of every renewable resource that hopes to promise a green future or non-renewable resource that threaten us of our secure existence with each passing day. We need to trust our own selves as we are sustainable enough to power up what ever we want with…..every step we take. And that’s exactly what David Webb, from the British consultancy of Scott Wilson, is intending to do. He has proposed to make Spinnaker Tower in U.K. more energy efficient by collecting the energy of every person walking up and down the stairs there. His hope is to install miniature “heel-strike” generators underneath the stairs that would capture the power generated by any and everyone who treads down that tower. However the technology behind this isn’t that new as we all have learned about kinetic energy at school. Don’t you remember your teacher explaining the fact that anything in motion expends some form of energy? Guess David Webb’s grey cells held on to this teaching when the rest of the students’ grey cells were lazing.
He believes that if these generators were to be installed at the Victoria Underground Station in central London, the power generated by the 34,000 people moving around would be able to power approximately 6,500 lightbulbs. The technology also has application beyond the small steps. Plans are afoot to look into installing these devices in the tower itself, to harness energy from the swaying movement of the building. Ingenious! His ultimate goal is to install them in every rail station, shopping center and even in your shoes!
Via Inhabitat
