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We Could Make Our Roads Into Solar and Piezo-Electric Generators
I wrote yesterday:
Another use of a free, wasted byproduct to generate electricity is piezo-electric energy. "Piezo" means pressure. Anything that produces pressure can produce energy.
For
example, a train station in Japan installed piezo-electric equipment
in the ground, so that the foot traffic of those walking through the
train station generates electricity (turnstiles at train, subway and
ferry stations, ballparks and amusement parks can also generate
electricity).Similarly, all exercise machines at the gym or at home can be hooked up to produce electricity.
But
perhaps the greatest untapped sources of piezo-electric energy are
freeways and busy roads. If piezo-electric mats were installed under
the busiest sections [a little ways under the surface], the thousands
of tons of vehicles passing over each day would generate massive
amounts of electricity for the city's use.
A couple of readers thought that sounded nuts.
But as TreeHugger [I told you, this is hippie Earth Day edition ...] notes today:
Copyright TNO 2011
The
Dutch are well known for their ubiquitous bike lanes, to the point
where Amsterdam is neck and neck with Copenhagen for the title of most
bike-loving capital in Europe. Now, Denmark will have to come up with
something big to match the latest plan from the Netherlands - the
installation of solar panels in roads, starting with bike lanes.
Talk
about the efficient use of space: if you're going to have roads (and
hopefully you'll have bike lanes), why not put that space to work
producing energy? Called the Solaroad, the project is the brainchild of Dutch research firm TNO.
The idea is pretty straightforward: a layer of concrete forms the road
itself. A centimeter thick layer of crystalline silicon solar cells is
laid on top, and covered by a layer of toughened glass. The energy
potential: 50kWh per square meter per year, which can then be used to
power street lighting, traffic systems and households.
But it's still an idea in development, which is why TNO, working with the Province of North Holland, the consulting firm Ooms Averhorn Group and the tech firm Intech,
is starting with a small-scale pilot program in the town of Krommenie,
outside of Amsterdam. Scheduled for installation next year, the first
Solaroad will hopefully allow its developers better implement many more
throughout the country.
Now why not put a piezo-electric mat under the crystalline silicon solar cells, under the layer of toughened glass?
We'd get two different forms of energy generation at once...
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GW does thermodynamics and actual anything?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQFEY9RIRJA
- Ned
That's fine to suggest new and novel improvements in energy efficiency. But without reference to the Energy Return on Investment the idea is little more than a daydream.
"Here at home we`ll play in the city
Powered by the sun
Perfect weather for a streamlined world
There`ll be spandex jackets one for everyone"
I.G.Y.
"On that train all graphite and glitter
Undersea by rail
Ninety minutes from NewYork to Paris
Well by seventy-six we'll be A.O.K."
...
Do you know how much a road costs? It takes about 100 barrels of oil per mile to make the most rudimentary road.
Now let's add some solid state crystalline structure. Multiply the cost by 100 for the cheapest piezo material (quartz). 1 million per mile and you haven't even gotten close to solving the engineering problems of producing a coherent current out of it. Get fancy with the crystalline structure and the multiple could go to 1.e8.
Dreamers like you belong in one place, the white house, spending that fake stolen money.
Americans still haven't figured out how to consistently build roads that are pothole resistant and American roads are too expensive per square meter to build and maintain as it is. Considering that a smooth road is more energy efficient that one laden with pot holes, I think the US needs to learn how how to master the basics before pitching pie in the sky dreams that only work with large taxpayer subsidies in a time of budgetary shortfalls.
Interesting, GW. Many practical and technical problems come to mind, but I'm still glad there are people out there thinking about this kind of stuff. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.
Shoes with piezo electric generators might work t power soldiers' laptops & nightvision batteries.
I looked into it a while back, but the current created was way too weak.
Come on, just make the buggers sweat more: right about at the point where walking in their spring-loaded shoes is akin to trudging through 2' of swamp muck, I'm sure you'll reach a break even point on replacing a few batteries.
nanoscale solar cells paint the buildings streets clothing who cares its the end.
piezoelectrics sound interesting...
just invent a treadmill that stores energy and pay ppl to work out. birds and stones.
thanks for the info, gw.
(wait, any of thatll require silver... sounds like technologies to preserve and extend the efficiency of silver use will become increasingly important for humanity)
But as TreeHugger [I told you, this is hippie Earth Day edition ...]
Every edition of GW is hippie earth day edition. You are one of the principal warriors on the productive economy. Did you help place the "Georgia Guide Stones"?
the great pyrimid at Giza is(was) the largest pieso electic generator ever built. It focused the earths tectonic energy and focussed it at its apex.
They claim it may have been used as a giant transmitter with a directional point toward the center star in Orion's belt.
It had a perfect 'A' pitch.
This pyrimid predates all of history and was not a burial tomb as some Egyptologists claim.
On you note. Consider the laws of thermodynamics. My understanding is Piezo crystals have to compress to generate electricity. What about putting peizo electric crystals in the suspension of the vehicle. Our poor roads would then become a good thing.
Or we could run the whole power grid on unicorn farts at a fraction of the cost (and net at least as much power). Call us when you get a working model, George. Zzzzzzzzz.
I used to do research into alternative energy strategies like this... basically theoretical exercises that don't have practical application...Like houses with no windows (stop heat losses), underground living (tap passive ground source heat, solar hot water heating in Canada, Wind diesel, Photovoltaic etc etc.
All of them have no cost effective application in most cases.
They are fun exercises in what is possible and it helps to understand where the theory needs to improve >>>>...unless the government gets involved and they become political ...which we all know means taxpayers are on the hook for some boondoggle that makes the policy makers feel good and creates great photo ops and makes them all feel like they have justified their existence (read put on resume for the next run up the ladder).
I always supoor free thinking and debate of issues...Well Done GW
The laws of physics are pretty much closed for debate. You may morally want to extract free energy from thin air, may find it convenient for your economics analysis, may even be able to rally votes around the concepts and plan on marching forward to a shining new future based upon what looks like a stellar idea, but physics doesn't really respond to wants and dreams. It is impervious to majority rule and/or populism.
If you are getting energy out of a system, someone or something has to be putting it in. Devices that convert one form of energy to another, or to motion, always work at less than 100% efficiency. Sad but true, those are the rules. Therefore if you want to rely upon a device that uses motion (piezo) to extract energy (electricity), someone is going to spend more energy moving the one side of the system than you'll get out of the other side. The motion of cars comes from burning gas, so you'd spend more energy driving cars over comparatively "spongy" or "mushy" piezo roads than you'd get electrical energy out. Same reason puts the kibosh on bolting a propeller and electric generator onto the roof of your car, or cooling the world by leaving frig doors open, etc...
The First Law of Thermodynamics can be expressed in everyday terms:
You can't win
You do not get anything for nothing
There is no such thing as a free lunch
Devices like solar cells rely on non-human generated partners on one side of the system, such as the Sun. Where normally solar energy would just be absorbed by some surface, or reflected back into space, a solar cell converts part of that energy into electricity. But the energy isn't "free"; part of the heating/reflecting that would have taken place *without* the presence of the solar cell doesn't take place, and the Earth is a smidgen cooler because of it. For all I know if we coated the surface of the world with solar cells, we might shortly freeze to death from a human induced ice age. Do you see the Conservation of Energy, here? You can't give something to a Peter without also having to rob (by an equal or greater amount) some Paul...
This article is well-intentioned but stupid and ignorant. In that regard, it mirrors to a large degree the track record of well intentioned but stupid and ignorant rulers in government. Which is exactly why government should keep the heck away from *all* things science related. No subsidies, no tax breaks or incentives, no taxpayer pain to support idiotic scientifically stoopid programs. (Can you spell Ethanol?). If you really can't resist sticking a finger in then grant regular research amounts to Universities across the nation, but let the results stand on their own merits, not on what you wish would be.
Maybe piezo generators in a flight of stairs where weight-watchers meets then...steal the energy from those that really need to use it.
Anyway, without someone thinking about shit like this and trying it out I doubt much progress will be made. As long as I am not compelled to fund projects it's no skin off my nose. Hopefully someone, somewhere will come up with a breakthrough that can stand on its own merits.
Come on, its a beautiful Saturday morning. Don't spoil it with all these negative vibes.
My bad. How about this: Focus. Be Here Now. Reality IS. Exist in THIS one, not some other. This article is an excellent representation of a promising high school student encountering the 1st Law of Thermodynamics and beginning to understand the actual constraints any future progress must be subject to. Hosanna in the highest!
See also, #2:
"The law that entropy always increases, holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation — well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation."
- Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington
Gerorge, if you were my student I would send you do home work.
Piezo is not working. When you press on the mat you would need more energy to rise your weight from the mat. So the cars running over the mat will consume more fuel. Giving efficiency of piezo is less than 100% you will have energy loss, not gain.
lol, apparently the lay-man knows not that free lunches are thermodynamically impossible!
Piezo elecric would simply rob energy from the vehicle. i.e. you make the car/truck less efficient.
Personal Rapid Transit is the solution. Being pilotted at Heathrow airport now.
excellent idea! now who needs to get paid off and how much in order to make it happen?
Vlad: Which Japanese train stations?
GW: Top...Japanese...train stations.
<End Raiders of the Lost Ark reference>
The new generation of cold PV films are much cheaper to make than pure crystalline silicon. Efficiency enhancement of this thin film product could do much to promote PVs usage way beyond the mono crystalline base line production currently prevalent. I don't see solar and renewables making a SIGNIFICANT impact on world energy scene before thirty years even at current fossil fuel prices. The only stop gap solution to oil depletion/peaking is ALAS nuclear and coal gasification. Lets make the most of it by going, coal/water slurry or coal/oil slurry for transport and then coal gasification in decentralised locations to improve primal energy conversion efficiency via combined cycle and co-generation regional/urban retro-fitted configurations.
All the while pushing wind, geothermal, wave, renewable algae to oil, solar etc. to a maximum. More R&D in renewables should bring the unit price and innovation curve effect effectively into play over next 20 years.
The USA should move away from the corn to ethanol for fuel usage frenzied cycle. It is proven as the least EROI and energy efficient route there is (even sugar cane to ethanol is 8 times more efficient!). As well, food is a mega issue in coming decade. That the world's biggest grain producer wastes its precious arable land for making JUNK renewable fuel is a travesty of sound economic logic and a crime against the world populations.
GW - as you know, the paradigm of the past three generations - personal overland transport, easy overland transport at all, the roadway system, a global navy, air transport, industrial coal mining and associated electric power production (and other mass scale mining of phosphorous, etc.) - all if it has been powered by essentially free oil and the 140,000 BTU per gallon it delivers at atmospheric pressure in liquid, easy to transport form.
There is no substitute for it.
Electricity is great transport power - if one uses rail services. It's not portable due to the physics of batteries.
I know it's Earth Day and all, but jerking off in denial, that the oil paradigm can process as oil supplies don't grow exponentially, is only going to make the rekoning of reality that much harder on people.
Am sure it'll work fine in our winters in the northern, especially month-long blizzards solved and salved solely with heavy doses of salt and sand.
Coupled with 20+ - ton 18- and 22-wheeler long-haul traffic instead of eurotrash mini-trucks, this "centimeter thick layer of crystalline silicon solar cells is laid on top, and covered by a layer of toughened glass" doesn't have a chance.
Plus we'll no doubt turn the manufacturing of this "sand-which" into a gigantic federal handout or somehow F'Up the bidding process and end up handing the technology to some asian pirates. Either way we lose since our grandchildren will be taxed off the roads anyhow (example of irrational exuberance tax-wise: http://green.autoblog.com/2011/03/24/oregon-washington-texas-taxing-elec...).
On a related note: Cannabis users warned as high-strength skunk floods market
And here I was thinking that increased solar flare activity was somehow dropping the world's collective IQ....
yeah, right. Since we're out of stock of home-basement cold fusion reactors right now, I have some nice rose quartz crystals you can buy. Line em up with the earths vortex flux, and you have lots of free energy.
Payment in silver (physical, delivered), please.
If we just put those piezos under the floor at Michael Moores home we could power all of California 24/7.
Lol.
This story is 21 days late.
dang, that will have to be some way durable solar cells, even just with bike traffic, be interesting if they can make this practical.
Thorium MSRs are the only long term path forward if you do the math and look at least one full generation (~65 years) into the future at current standards of living (i.e. current energy per-capita consumption).
Do I have to link them *again*? Seriously? Just google "site:zerohedge.com CrazyCooter Thorium MSRs" and scroll down to my comment.
Please stop with the tree huggin' hippie shit (and I was a vegitarian for 14 years). Nature is cold and unforgiving, you either step to her beat or you starve. "Alternative energy" will never provide more than ~20% of humanities energy needs at current "western" levels.
And before you bust my balls, my electric is 100% hyrdro unless transmission towers are taken out by avalanche. Oh, and I have 4 miles to drive to work and I have a public transport option.
Are you prepared?
Regards,
Cooter
P.S. Not you MM, but GW.
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