Technology of The City 2.0: Power by footsteps
In his talk at TEDxBerlin, industrial design engineer Laurence Kemball-Cook discussed his invention, the Pavegen, a paving tile made of recycled car tires that converts the kinetic energy of footsteps into electrical power:
I’m fascinated by the built environment—and how to make our cities more sustainable...I used to work for one of Europe’s largest energy companies, and I was looking at how to create a new form of power in our cities that was a renewable source of energy…so I thought, what about a power source that was literally under our feet? That every step people make—if we could capture that? And I thought, think of all the millions of people in the world; think of all the hundreds of cities; and think about what could be created by it.
So I created…a flexible paving slab that converts the kinetic energy of your footstep into electrical power…it stores the energy from many people walking—throughout the day, throughout the night—in our cities.
A set of Pavegen is currently installed in a school in the UK, where the foot traffic of the 1,100 students is used to power school lighting systems. Tiles were also installed in the West Ham tube station during the London Olympics. According to an article on Efergy about the installation, “[during] the 2 weeks of the games the 12 tiles produced 72m joules of energy or 20 kilowatt-hours..sufficient to keep the walkway streetlamps illuminated at full power through the night, and at half power during the day, with plenty of back-up energy left over to spare.”
(Photos: Top, Shell LiveWIRE; Bottom, inhabitat)
TEDxCity2.0 day is October 13. For more City 2.0 technology and innovation, check out our City 2.0 TEDxTalks playlist.
TEDxTalks playlist: 5 talks on envisioning the city of the future—the City 2.0
What will the city of the future look like? According to the United Nations, by the year of 2050, 70% of the world’s population will be living in urban areas. Questions dominate our conception of the “City 2.0”: How will we transport ourselves? Where will we grow our food? How will we power our homes, our offices, our cities? What will happen to the natural world?
On October 13, 2012, communities across the globe will be asking these questions as part of TEDxCity2.0 day, a day during which nearly 70 TEDx events will be held in conjunction to dream the city of the future.
To celebrate the City 2.0 and the spirit of urban inspiration, here are 5 great TEDxTalks on the future of cities across the globe.
High Energy at TEDxBerlin
TEDxBerlin was not my first TEDx event. I’ve been to a few before. Yet, I was looking forward to this one because it was about energy — High Energy.
At this event, as I sat in my seat, listening to the speakers, waiting to be impressed, I was reminded that TED is more than just ‘ideas worth spreading’ or having the opportunity to hear inspiring stories.
It’s also about learning to think outside the box.
Though the theme of the event was High Energy, it could have easily been about unlimited possibilities; less about innovation and new forms of renewables as changing the manner in which we live our everyday lives and about taking that same effort we put into our daily existence and turning it into a greener process - more effective, more exciting, more sociable, and most of all, more fulfilling.
During TEDxBerlin breaks, there was lots of discussion, and I had the opportunity to talk with a woman who had heard of TED and TEDx but had not necessarily come because she was interested in the event’s theme.
In Berlin on a sabbatical, and working on a project involving nursing and medical practices in the EU, she’d come to TEDxBerlin looking for fresh thinking. All fired up to change the system, she wanted to knock her colleagues out of their complacency, convincing them of the need to develop new practices in hospitals and care homes, helping her to create better environments for both patients and healthcare professionals. Listening to the talks at TEDxBerlin, she got caught up in the feeling that one person can make a difference, that good ideas can be infectious and that one person’s actions can serve as a model for others.
Sometimes, it’s less about making the biggest impact as it is about taking on a different mindset, bringing about change by simply adopting a heightened sense of living - more involved, more affirming and more worthwhile.
As Thimon von Berlepsch put it in his talk about magic — by consciously breaking the pattern of our everyday lives ever so slightly, we open ourselves up to a whole new world. Our perspective is altered and what we thought we already knew looks different, broadening our minds to other possibilities, allowing us to see the consequences of habits that perhaps we should rethink.
Sooner or later during such experiences, a point comes when we have the chance to make a choice. Do I carry on as I have before, or do I take a new path, following those ideas I’ve just been awakened to and seeing them through?
When you decide to take that new direction, it’s not so much because you have to or even because you should. It’s because you want to. And you know that just by that simple act of living your life exactly as you choose, the world that we all dream of comes that much closer to reality.
Written by Robert Barrett
