energy from steps?!

wetin we stil dey do for dis country? Ordinary keke napep we neva produce!
Paving
slabs that convert energy from
people's footsteps into electricity
are set to help power Europe's
largest urban mall, at the 2012
London Olympics site.
The recycled rubber "PaveGen"
paving slabs harvest kinetic
energy from the impact of people
stepping on them and instantly
deliver tiny bursts of electricity to
nearby appliances. The slabs can
also store energy for up to three
days in an on-board battery,
according to its creator.
In their first commercial
application, 20 tiles will be
scattered along the central
crossing between London's
Olympic stadium and the recently
opened Westfield Stratford City
mall -- which expects an
estimated 30 million customers
in its first year.
"That should be enough feet to
power about half its (the mall's)
outdoor lighting needs," said
Laurence Kemball-Cook, a 25-
year-old engineering graduate
who developed the prototype
during his final year of university
in 2009.
The green slabs are designed to
compress five millimeters when
someone steps on them, but
PaveGen will not share the
precise mechanism responsible
for converting absorbed kinetic
energy into electricity.
Although each step produces
only enough electricity to keep
an LED-powered street lamp lit
for 30 seconds, Kemball-Cook
says that the tiles are a real-
world "crowdsourcing"
application, harnessing small
contributions from a large
number of individuals.
"We recently came back from a
big outdoor festival where we
got over 250,000 footsteps --
that was enough to charge
10,000 mobile phones," said
Kemball-Cook.
The young inventor envisages
PaveGen systems being used to
power off-grid appliances such
as public lighting, illuminated
street maps and advertising, and
to be installed in areas of dense
human traffic such as city
centers, underground stations
and school corridors.
"Our main test installation is at a
school in Kent (southeast
England) -- where 1,100 kids
have devoted their lives to
stamping all over them for the
last eight months," said Kemball-
Cook.
In its current form, the PaveGen
paving slab contains a low-
energy LED which lights up,
expressing the energy transfer
idea to the user but only
consuming around 5% of the
energy from each footstep.
"This is what I really enjoy about
the design," said Richard Miller,
head of sustainability at the UK's
government-funded Technology
Strategy Board.
"As much as it's an effective,
common-sense source of some
sustainable electricity, it's also a
great way for people to engage
with the issue of sustainability ...
to feel like they are part of the
solution in a very immediate, fun
and visual way that doesn't make
you do anything you wouldn't
already be doing," said Miller.
However, although generally
enthusiastic about the product,
for the time being Miller
withholds speculation about its
far-reaching impact.
"As with all things of this nature,
on a large scale and in the long
term, its success will be
determined by how cost-effective
it is to produce ... If it turns out to
be expensive, then it will struggle
to find a place as anything more
than a niche application," he said.
Kemball-Cook declines to
comment on the cost of each
slab, arguing that their current
price is much higher than what it
will be when they go into mass
production.
That said, the company
has already won a
spate of awards,
including the Big Idea
category at the UK's
Ethical Business
Awards and the Shell
LiveWire Grand Ideas
Award. PaveGen has
also recently received a
round of financing
from a group of
London-based angel
investors, although the
sum is undisclosed.
Kemball-Cook is confident that
the slab is durable. Over the
course of a month it was
subjected to a machine that
replicates the pounding of
footsteps, non-stop every day, he
added.
"It's also really easy to install as a
retrofit on existing pavements,
because they can be made to
match their exact dimensions ...
you just replace one slab with
another," he said.
Looking to the future, Kemball-
Cook would like to see the paving
system introduced to the
developing world, in areas that
have a high footfall, but are off-
grid, such as the slums in
Mumbai.
"The average person takes 150
million steps in their lifetime, just
imagine the potential," he said.
Na wa o.