From eco-clubbing to eco-working
With its powerful sound-system, its numerous lights, its heating and cooling system, a nightclub is an energy glutton. Trying to address this issue, the first eco-club of the world opened last September in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The Club Watt saves 30% electricity costs by re-injecting into the main circuit the energy produced by its customers shaking their bodies on the dance floor. The trick? A spring-loaded floor, which dips about 1 cm and activates a flywheel, which starts to capture kinetic energy convert it to electricity, similar to the electro-mechanical process of a bicycle light.
source: http://io9.com
There is a lot of research done on energy saving, but it leaves a wide field open to innovators, imagining revolutionary appliances for old and new technologies. When I heard about this floor transforming movement into energy, I tried to imagine other places or things that we use, where energy is lost, that could be collected instead. What about a computer that would re-load it’s battery when typing on the keyboard?
An average person types between 30-50 words per minute. Considering that the average word is 4 to 6 letters long – say 5, typing on a computer equals pushing down a button 150 to 250 times per minute. Wouldn’t that produce enough energy to power a notebook, or at least increase its battery life? Plus it would have a wonderful effect on our productivity: imagine you’re 5 hours in the plane without a power plug. Should you rather watch a 2 hour movie, or frenetically type this report you should have done weeks ago, which would keep your battery going for the whole journey?
What are some other ways we can apply this technology?
What could be other ways to easily save energy in our daily life?
This article has been cross-posted on the IncuTANK blog.
On the 16. June 2009 at 13:10 o'Clock
Video about possible other applications of this technology on a Swiss site (in french only) http://www.nouvo.ch/s-012