Speed bump power generator

[svetz]

No, it's not April 1st, but it seems like it should be. Was thinking about speed bumps while watching cars whiz past and wondered if anyone had turned it into a generator. Sure enough (ref): Speed bump power generator (SBPG) is a system producing power from cars moving on the road. When the car passes over a SBPG, a mechanical system absorbs its kinetic energy and transfers it into electrical power. In this paper, the different types of SBPG are presented. The average car is around 1500 kG, so extrapolating the curve that's about 2 kW per car per speed bump. Of course, to get kWh depends on the frequency of vehicles passing rather than speed.

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[svetz]

Road Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters

The "no-bump" generator... power and smooth driving with no vehicle losses.

So rather than solar in the roads or speed bumps, how about pizeo-electric ceramic crystals? ref

The concept is simple, the crystal is stressed as the weight of the vehicle passes over creating power. Each device produces 80 milliwatts, but millions of them along miles of road?

 

[Rider]

No, it's not April 1st, but it seems like it should be. Was thinking about speed bumps while watching cars whiz past and wondered if anyone had turned it into a generator. Sure enough (ref): The average car is around 1500 kG, so extrapolating the curve that's about 2 kW per car per speed bump. Of course, to get kWh depends on the frequency of vehicles passing rather than speed.

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If you reverse this concept, and make the vehicle shock absorbers the generators, you could recharge a vehicle battery. The energy I think would be far less per bump than the 2kW of the stationary generator, but a moving vehicle is constantly moving up and down, so it might make up for that in the long run.

"Hang on babe... we're going off road!! I have to recharge the car!!"

 

[svetz]

If you reverse this concept, and make the vehicle ... the generators...

Shock absorbers and springs do turn kinetic energy into heat, so there is an opportunity to recover otherwise lost energy.

You might have a knack for this sort of thing, not so crazy as people are working on something similar... tires also create waste heat as they flex.

Goodyear unveiled a concept tire which can generate electricity during road normal use... ref To do this, a piezoelectric array is mounted in one or more tires of the vehicle. As the vehicle drives down the road, the tire is flexed during each revolution to distort the piezoelectric elements and generate electricity. An electric circuit delivers the energy to the electrical system of the vehicle. ref

There's a bit more motion range in a tire then concrete, wonder if you couldn't use something other than piezoelectric elements to more efficiently recapture that energy.