The Piezoelectric Boogie
Pulsing beats, thumping bass, flashing lights, dancing, and piezoelectricity? Yes, piezoelectricity. Piezoelectricity, the source of energy found commonly within the internals of a quartz watch has club-goers raving for this green source of energy—literally. Recently, piezoelectricity technology has moved from the wristwatch to the dance floor—the actual floor—to harvest the kinetic energy of dancers.
At the Surya night club in London, the dance floor is equipped with a “bouncing floor” composed of springs and power generating blocks which, when compressed by the weight of a dancing clubber, produces a small electrical current via piezoelectricity providing up to 60% of the nightclub’s electrical needs. This technology along with wind turbines and solar panels installed at Surya create an almost completely sustainable nightclub—the first in the world!
The application of the piezoelectric flooring certainly has more uses than high energy nightclubs. Perhaps, the technology could be rolled out on sidewalks, at busy bus terminals, or even shopping malls where green energy could be harvested at a large scale.
I find it fascinating that a technology once reserved for your Casio can be extrapolated and magnified to produce enough power for an entire building.
Where do you see this technology applied? Do you feel comfortable knowing you’re clubbing on an energy-producing, piezoelectric, flashing (that’s my guess) dance floor?
I know I am.
To learn more, check out this article from the Daily Mail.
Comments
Great post Jitin.
Endless possibilities, I must say. How about getting the tech applied on the reclining chairs in offices, cinema halls? How about having the racing track laid with a turf underneath with this tech on?
An India based company is working on other such green energy sources. You can check at: www.ideaforge.com
Posted by: Krishna | December 12, 2008 07:15 PM
Sorry, the link to Ideaforge is http://www.ideaforge.co.in/
Posted by: Krishna | December 12, 2008 07:39 PM
A nice post Jitin.
Clearly the technology has many potential applications.
I think most applications will be limited to instrumentation right from high speed railways, high speed marine vessels, giant process industries and may be even in space applications, the options are endless. However energy harvesting from this technology will have very limited use, at least for the next two decades.
The key reasons are the economics of the technology and the ability of the technology to produce grid quality power
As a thumb rule it takes approximately $1.1 million investment to build 1 MW of installed capacity for coal powered plant (as I remember from my old ALSTOM days), and Piezoelectric electric technology energy will never be able to give any thing even remotely close.
The technology will also be not able to produce a consistent output adding further complexity for grid integration, this will limit the use of the technology to localised power requirements if at all it is used for power harvesting.
PS :
A commercial energy harvester, http://www.mide.com/
Posted by: Vallinayagam S | December 19, 2008 03:36 PM