Hey if we make a road that generates electricity and run electric cars on it then we can have the cars generate the electricity that they run on. Then I won’t have to pay my rent! Hope and change! Yes we can!
I’ve heard of this before, and it is most certainly a poorly-thought idea.
What next, windmill-powered aircraft?
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2009/08/super-tough-solar-panels-could-make-every-road-into-a-power-plant/
very cool, but...i guess you could harvest the potential electricity from the flapping of birds’ wings by strapping little piezo-electric harvesters to them...but is it worth it?
Interesting concept but the every present threat of potholes would turn the lights out, especially during the winter. All of these green energy "solutions" do nothing to replace fossil fuels and can only be counted upon to charge storage banks to be converted to something usefull but reasonably never for an on-demand basis. To date, only nukes do the job.
Been wondering when someone would pursue this. There’s a lot of wasted energy there. Heard of a farmer who heats his buildings from waste heat gathered from water pipes running under the nearby freeway.
Anyone familiar with Radios(or other electronic devices)are familiar with piezo electric devices. Crystals are piezo electric, if you make a crystal vibrate, it produces electicity, if you shoot electricity to a crystal it vibrates, which in turn produces more electricity. This is a very useful characteristic in electronic devices, such as TVs, computers and Radios.
The same thing this article talks about was mentioned several years ago by someone in the US, can't remember who it was or the exact year, but the person wanted to wire up our roads with piezo electric devices to produce power. It remains to be seen if this would be practical.
"The name of the game is harvesting," he told Sky News. "Harvesting means energy which is available but is going to waste.
What energy is going "to waste"? The energy that propells the truck down the road? So now there'll be less forward propulsion by sapping some of that energy to generate some electric energy - with less than 100% efficiency.
Sheesh!
If the pads under the road create extra resistance to the turning of the wheels of the vehicles on the road, then it’s not free energy, is it?
A road surface that is designed to compress will necessarily waste more gas. Everybody gets lower mpg’s and the greenies say they need $100+ billion for more roads. First Law of Thermodynamics Fail.