Instead of acting as one of the most bland parts of city landscapes, what if manholes served a purpose? That’s what designers Cheolyeon Jo and Youngsun Lee propose with their “Eco Sign“, an electronic manhole cover that gives directions to the closest train or bus stop.
Any one point on a busy street can receive up to 50,000 steps a day, so imagine if you could take all that foot traffic and turn it into something useful – like energy! A new product designed by Laurence Kemball-Cook, the director of Pavegen Systems Ltd., can do just that. With a minuscule flex of 5mm, the energy generating pavement is able to absorb the kinetic energy produced by every footstep, creating 2.1 watts of electricity per hour.
Synch your workout with a little river detox, then rehydrate with a cup of the fresh water you just filtered. This people-powered water purification island, designed by Jakub Szczesny as part of the Synchronicity architecture and art festival in Warsaw, Poland, hooks up basic exercise machines to kinetically pump polluted water through four filters into overhead tanks that spill into a large drinking fountain at the end of the cycle. This floating platform on the Vistula River aims to empower citizens toward environmental clean-up, and apparently would work on any body of water with enough local bodies willing to pedal for their potables.
The serene back-and-forth movement of a rocking chair is nothing if not relaxing. It can also be useful and productive, according to Rochus Jacob. The designer’s Murakami Chair, a winner in designboom’s Green Life competition, uses the kinetic energy produced by rocking to power an attached OLED lamp.
Designer Chiyu Chen has conceived of an ingenious transit system that encourages the use of sustainable transportation by crediting people for renting and riding bicycles. His Hybrid2 system consists of a fleet of rentable bicycles that are capable of generating and storing kinetic energy, which is then used to power the city’s hybrid electric buses. Simply rent a bike, charge it up with kinetic energy from pedal power, and then return it to a kiosk – the station feeds energy into the city’s smart grid, and you receive a credit towards your next bus pass!
Every year millions of tourists and locals descend upon Tibet’s temples and spin the prayer wheels contained inside. If the mechanical energy generated by the movement of these spinning wheels could be harnessed, we could potentially reduce the size of our current carbon footprint and supplement an inadequate and unreliable electrical grid for numerous individuals. The Prayer Wheel Energy Generator, designed by Taikkun Yang Li does just this by transforming all of those good vibes into electricity that could be used to provide reliable energy for daily needs such as evening lighting.
Charting the future of cell phone technology, Kyocera recently unveiled a kinetic energy-powered phone that is capable of folding up like a wallet. Designed by industrial designer Susan McKinney, the EOS phone consists of a soft, semi-rigid polymer skin surrounding a flexible low-energy OLED display. Shape memory allows the phone’s keys to pop up when in use and blend in with the surface during downtime.
Here’s a brilliant invention that makes us wonder why all city sidewalks aren’t covered in piezoelectric tiles. POWERleap is a floor tiling system that converts wasted energy from human foot traffic into electricity. The magic behind that awesomeness is piezoelectric technology and advanced circuitry design, which converts pitter-patter into power. First showcased in 2007 …
Engineers at Innowattech in Israel recently created a new type of road that generates electricity as vehicles pass over it! The supercharged surface is embedded with piezoelectric crystals, which transform kinetic energy from passing vehicles into an electrical current. With widespread adoption, the technology could feed energy back into the nation’s burgeoning electric vehicle grid, transforming congested roadways into a clean green source of energy.
Umbrellas that light up with integrated LEDs are nothing new: from Instructable’s DIY illuminated umbrella to patio umbrellas available at Lowes, LED Umbrellas have been around the block. But here’s a brilliant idea we’ve never seen before: an illuminated umbrella that is powered by rain! Designer Sang-Kyun Park has taken the illuminated umbrella idea to the next level with Lightdrops, an umbrella made from polyvinylidene fluoride [PDVF], a conductive membrane that powers LEDs with energy from falling rain.
Harvesting the kinetic energy generated by crowds of people is one of our favorite approaches to renewable energy. Recently Netherlands-based Natuurcafé La Port installed an energy generator in a rotating door, so every time someone walks in for a cup of coffee, they give just a little bit of their energy back to the coffee shop. We keep saying that solving the problem of global warming will require that we open up new doors in the field of renewable energy, but we must admit that we never expected to mean it literally!
Perfect for emergency preparedness and cute to boot, this adorable penguin eco flashlight would make an excellent addition to any home. The bright light eschews a landfill-bound battery for a pump powered kinetic charger that provides an hour of light for each minute spent pumping. Capable of …
The e-charkha is an ingenious update to India’s ubiquitous charkha [spinning wheel] that transforms the simple machine into a potentially significant source of energy for millions of struggling families in India. Designed by RS Hiremath, the e-charkha “not only produces yarn but also generates electricity using a maintenance free lead acid battery fixed at the bottom, which functions as an inverter.”
In the age of digital photography, photographers on the go know that keeping charged is an essential consideration. Whereas most cameras use batteries for power, Sony recently revealed a unique looking device that is powered by kinetic energy! The latest in the company’s Odo line of green gadgets, the Twirl n’ Take camera is charged by giving its circular head a spin.
Earlier this year we highlighted Idaho startup M2E Power’s push to develop motion-powered electronics for the military. Now M2E is emphasizing the commercial applications for their technology, with a specific goal: revolutionizing cell phone batteries. M2E will announce the development of an external charger later this month that will generate between 300 and 700 percent more energy than current kinetic energy technologies, and may eventually replace cell phone batteries altogether.
We love our kinetic energy here at Inhabitat, and we are excited to announce inventive use of human kinetic power: The brandnew 2 GB Eco Media Player is hand-crank portable media player can play music, video, and even charge your cellphone, all from a few seconds of cranking! What’s more renewable than human power? We love that someone finally had the brilliant idea to mix renewable energy generation with music & video – all the best things in life in one cute little package.
Here’s a great idea for a cell-phone that is thoroughly green in every way: from its biodegradable bamboo materials, to its thoughtfully considered lifecycle, to its ingenious use of kinetic human power to charge the battery with renewable energy. The ‘Bamboo’ phone, by Dutch designer Gert-Jan van Breugel was one of the finalists shortlisted at this year’s 2008 Greener Gadgets Design Competition (and Jill’s personal favorite). Although this design didn’t end up winning one of the coveted top three prizes in the competition, it certainly caught our kinetic-energy-loving eye.
Gravia, a gravity based kinetic energy lamp concept, wowed our panel judges and the crowd at the Greener Gadgets Conference, earning a second place accolade in the design competition. Created by Clay Moulton, Gravia evokes the lines of a classic timepiece in a modern aesthetic and uses human powered kinetic energy to light an ambient LED floorlamp. It’s a fantastic concept – but one that has stirred up some debate across the blogosphere recently in regards to whether or not it is possible to build such a lamp right now with the technology that exists today.
The designers at New York City based Fluxxlab studio have come up with an ingenious sustainable energy harvesting idea that makes you wonder why no one else has thought of it before. Their Revolution Door manages to capture otherwise wasted human energy from the revolving doors we all see at various large buildings. If you think about it, this concept is quite similar to a turbine spinning somewhere deep inside a hydroelectric dam or within wind turbine to generate renewable electricity.
A human-powered energy-generating gym like Hong Kong’s is now taking shape in Seattle, turning human sweat into usable electric energy. By connecting spinning bikes to wind-generator motors, clients at Adam Boesel’s green microgym can generate enough electricity to power the gym’s music system or run their own personal DVD player.
We’ve been following (and fascinated by) developments in wave power technology, from Portugal’s wave farm to Finavera’s AquaBuoy 2.0. And now we are thrilled to announce that San Francisco-based Pacific Gas & Electric Co (PG&E) has entered into a long-term commercial wave energy power purchasing agreement (PPA) to use this innovative technology. PG&E is the first US utility company to commit to wave power and expects to start delivering wave-powered electricity into the grid by 2010!
Pounding the pavement in your sneakers requires energy, and unfortunately, all that kinetic energy is mostly lost to the ground…. until now… Smart art students Christian Croft and Kate Harman have devised a scheme to turn regular sneakers into energy generating machines using a mini-generator and a tiny micro-computer.
LOTS MORE GREAT GREEN DESIGN STORIES HERE... KEEP READING!
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