news.bbc.co.uk — Dorset inventor Peter Hughes' Electro-Kinetic Road Ramp creates around 10kW of power each time a car drives over its metal plates. The prototype was created and tested at Hughes Research unit at the Westland Helicopter base in Somerset, at a cost of £1m.
Dec 18, 2005 View in Crawl 4
padewakDec 19, 2005
Let's rock on to "Electric Avenue" and then we'll take it higher!!
pynejDec 19, 2005
What you seam to be missing here is that this will NOT ccreate any new magical enery, all enery comes from some other form. This is mearly taking the car's energy and nabing a bit of it. But in doing so the car loses a bit of speed and thus has to expell more gass to make up for it. Yes a small bit of gass but it adds up. Why not save that gas and find a more efficant form of energy production... Just realize, enery dosn't come from nothing and i dont want to lose gass mileage for bob to power his christmas tree. (no offence bob)
paniqueDec 19, 2005
As a long time designer of perpetual motion machines, I know for certain no energy comes for free... So, they gov't would then be stealing energy from my car as it drives over this device. Clearly this is illegal. It should definitely be stopped. Why should I have to dish out $0.001 worth of gasoline every time I drive over a plate? I'm already paying for the goddamn electricity through my taxes anyway.
screensnotDec 19, 2005
fmaxwell said:"What good is a speed bump that lays flat as soon as a large truck hits it at high speed but that practically cripples someone on a moped who is going at the speed limit?"I don't think it will work like that. I don't know exactly how it does work, but here is how I think it might work:It uses electronics to control the rate at which it lays down. So that no matter how heavy the vehicle goes over it, it lays over at the same rate. For a heavy vehicle, it can apply a higher load to the generator, and make more power. For a light vehicle, it lightens the load on the generator, allowing the ramp to flatten at the same rate, but producing less energy.Think of it like regen braking on an electric car. There is an electronic controller that turns the electric motor into a generator. If you only need to brake lightly, a light touch on the brake pedal tells the controller to only put a light load on the generator, giving a slight resistance to the turning tires. Stepping harder on the brake pedal tells the controller to increase the generator load, giving you stronger braking, and more regen power.Because these ramps will have at least some mass (thereby some inertia), there will be a point where the vehicle will be too small to knock the ramp over at the prescribed rate. So, maybe a bicycle would find a harsher ride over it, but it would feel the same to a sedan as it does to a semi-tractor.Maybe these would be good to have at freeway off ramps. They could harness energy that is being turned into heat by our brakes. I doubt it though. Seems to me that it could cause problems if someone were making an emergency stop.
simon21Dec 19, 2005
I have had the chance to study a very similar system the Egyptian Electric Pedal <a class="user" href="http://www.3t-eep.com/.">http://www.3t-eep.com/.</a> It is indeed wrong to think that this is just a way to produce "green" energy since it only converts potiential and cinetic energy of a car into electricity. The technology may be of very high interest on slopes where cars have to get rid of their cinetic energy anyway (normally just dissipating them into heat). The Egyptian Pedal I have analysed, drivers don't see anything at all, so they do not have this effect of slowing down the traffic. Depending on the traffic it can generate up to 3GWh per year and they sell this energy directly to consumers (they are actually looking for clients) at a price of only 0.06 USD. So if you live on a street with high density of traffic and there is a slope nearby, you can contact them to get a clean and network independant energy source.
wantednzDec 20, 2005
"Make a speed bump that absorbs energy and, surprise surprise, it will take *more* energy to cross" - What? A ramp that goes down if anything will be easier to drive over than a static speedbump.
dextreDec 20, 2005
ingenious!
djhifisiDec 20, 2005
cool! Wish I had invented this.
Closed AccountDec 20, 2005
Joincamp wrote:"wow, i can't believe this went over so many people's heads."Wow, I can't believe you think that you're smarter than all of the people who actually understood it."just to reiterate what some people were saying, "It takes otherwise wasted energy, and makes it useful"."Just how is forward momentum in a car "wasted energy"? That's like me saying that I've found a way to take all of that energy you waste by walking places and harness it by putting you on a treadmill."You should feel privileged to ride over one of those speed bumps, because for that moment, you are driving a hybrid car with regenerative braking, except minus the wear and tear on your car."Yeah, beating the suspension of a car up and down doesn't put any wear and tear on it. Neither does accelerating to make up for the speed lost to the power-stealing ramp."and i don't see these popping up like rabbits, since they would be fairly expensive."I don't see them popping up because anyone with a bit of engineering savvy would tell you that they would lead to more fuel consumption, more noise, and more wear and tear on cars.
mskoglyJul 13, 2006
I can't believe anyone else than me has had this idea! Thats just super. Speed bumps are everywhere in Norway, in the city of Bergen alone there are supposed to be over 2300 speedbumps. I have no Idea how many cars drive over them each day, but if it was 100000 hits per day (it probably is ten times that), that would generate 1 million kWh. Pr day! At least the city of Bergen would be able to generate enough to run all its street lights. Got to do some more research on this now...
sentaiSep 6, 2008
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