Israeli researchers at Innowattech capture energy from traffic
Capturing lost energy with regenerative braking systems is one thing. This, however, is another ball-game entirely. Researchers in Israel have been experimenting with power generators placed underneath the road's surface to capture the mechanical energy of cars passing above and turn it into electricity.
The research is being carried out by an Israeli start-up called Innowattech, in conjunction with the Israel National Roads Company and the Technion, Israel's technological institute in Haifa. Referred to as "parasitic energy harvesting", the technology involves small piezoelectric generators placed five centimeters below the asphalt's surface. The weight of the cars passing over the road's surface is captured – 2000 watts an hour in "regular" traffic conditions – and stored in roadside batteries. Drivers reportedly feel no difference in the road, although naturally the initiative is limited by the progress of battery technology (or hydraulics, with the Dragon Power system).
As Better Place discovered, Israel's geographic and economic situation makes it an ideal testing ground for green technologies. The first implementation was over a relatively small ten-meter stretch of road on Israel's main north-south highway, and is now being placed in one-kilometer sections for further study. Further applications are also being evaluated, including pedestrian walkways, airport runways and railroads. It's not just for Burger King any more. Thanks for the tip, Mono!
[Source: Globes.co.il | Image: Uriel Sinai/Getty]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Turbofrog 12:07PM (10/12/2009)
What does 2000 watts an hour even mean? Is this a constant rate of 2000 watts, resulting in 2 kWh per hour? I know you're just copying and pasting what's in the article, but journalists seem to have an immensely difficult time getting units right when it comes to electricity, which gets really frustrating if you're actually trying to learn about something.
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Bip-D-Bo 12:13PM (10/12/2009)
My thoughts exactly. Usually, journalists have no clue what units to use. Also "parasitic" is the right term. Unless these are placed at places where cars are only slowing down, then they might as well just siphon gas out of everyone's tanks.
Dolphyn 12:15PM (10/12/2009)
See http://www.innowattech.co.il/generalEvents.aspx?eid=22
The company claims a single lane, 1 kilometer long, will produce 200 KWh per hour (or as I would say, 200 kilowatts) ... provided that the traffic is 600 heavy trucks or buses per hour. That's one large vehicle every 6 seconds.
ebow 12:33PM (10/12/2009)
Limit the installations to downhill slopes and they'll reduce the parasitic nature of the energy capture.
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Matt234 12:51PM (10/12/2009)
I agree, this would have to go where people are always naturally slowing down, i.e. a downhill slope or highway offramp. Someone please explain how this could work without slowing the car down (at least by some small amount)?
Would be great if it worked though. Creates energy and saves people's break pads. By "works" I mean if it is a viable business model.
Another idea might be a new way to pay for toll roads: they could literally be charging for use of the road (pun intended).
ronnie schreiber 6:44PM (10/12/2009)
It's not parasitic to the car. The system takes energy from the asphalt being deformed as the vehicle passes over it.
RPM 3:35AM (10/14/2009)
It is parasitic to cars..no way to get around the laws of physics. But as others have pointed out - placing them in areas where your going to most likely to coast or slow down (down slope of hills) it should have minimal impact on the efficiency of the cars.
David Wright 12:54PM (10/12/2009)
- or downhill and areas in which traffic will already be braking -
such as approaches to junctions. Or within traffic-calming road-humps.
Way back in the 1960's I proposed "tidal power" for the central
inland city of Birmingham, UK, where I then lived. Milking the tens
of thousands of tons of traffic that flowed into the city along radial routes each
weekday morning and out again each evening. Pointing out at the time
that it only made sense in parts of the route where vehicles were
slowing and dissipating energy.
Nothing came of it. But if someone thinks it a new idea and now wants to
make it happen - I shall smile ;o)
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Tom 1:21PM (10/12/2009)
OK you physicists out there, does this idea violate the Law of Conservation of Energy? Seems to me like the flexing of the roadway is just absorbing a little energy from each vehicle passing over it (thereby reducing fuel economy) and capturing it in batteries. Add the conversion losses, and it looks like a bad deal to me.
Any other thoughts?
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KK 1:52PM (10/12/2009)
Yes, it does slow down the cars. However, if installed in a place where cars would normally use their brakes (e.g. downhill slope, highway exits, before stop signs), this system would recover energy that would otherwise have been turned into waste heat by the brakes on the cars.
Jon 2:32PM (10/12/2009)
Unless you have regenerative braking...
nrb 5:35PM (10/12/2009)
Here's a thought. Think of it as a toll road. Rather than tossing money in the bin, you get reduced mpg. The owners of the road get to use your power to generate (and sell) electricity.
This assumes such a system would begin to pay for itself, which I highly doubt.
ronnie schreiber 6:45PM (10/12/2009)
It's just harvesting energy that the car is already expending as it deforms the asphalt. There's no additional load on the car. They engineered the piezoelectric device to have the same deformational characteristics as asphalt so as far as the car is concerned it's a normal road.
john 1:26PM (10/12/2009)
Scientifically the Law of Conservation of Energy cannot be violated. If the road is generating energy, then that energy must come at a price - additional resistance to the motion of the cars on the road, which means higher gas consumption for which the drivers must pay. Green energy this is not!
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ronnie schreiber 6:45PM (10/12/2009)
There's no additional resistance. The road seems like any other road to the car. The system is harvesting energy that's already being expended.
Erik Ness 1:38PM (10/12/2009)
As long as we're getting a free lunch, let's add wind turbines to our cars, and fans along the side of the road. The energy generated by driving on the parasitic road will be used to spin fans which will blow air on the turbines which will power the car...
Or we could take a physics class and pay attention.
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ronnie schreiber 5:41PM (10/13/2009)
I think the principals of Innowattech have taken a physics course or two.
Prof. Haim Abramovich
Chief Executive Officer
& Co-Founder
Associate professor of the faculty of Aerospace engineering, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, D.Sc. from the Technion -IIT.
Professional experience: Smart / intelligent structures, piezolaminated structures. Structural dynamics and stability, composite materials, impact on structures, Imperfections, vibrations and stability of shells and plates.
Author of patents and more than a hundred publications.
Prof. Charles Milgrom
Chief of the Medical Department
& Co-Founder
MD, Head Shoulder Section, Dept. of Orthopedics, Hadassah University Hospital, Co-founder and member of the Computer-Aided Surgery and Medical Image Processing Laboratory, at the School of Engineering and Computer Science, Givat Ram, Head of the Orthopedic Computer Assisted Orthopedic Surgery and Biomechanics Laboratory.
Research Interests: Epidemiology and prevention of overuse injuries. Nutrition, bone metabolism and stress fractures. Recurrent shoulder dislocation. Bone biomechanics. Computerized surgery fracture planning based on high order finite element analysis. Author of three patents and more than a hundred publications and books. Participation and organisation of International Conferences and Congresses.
Dr. Eugeny Harash
Chief Scientist
& Co-Founder
Ph.D. in Industry and Civil Engineering from the University of St.-Petersburg and M.Sc. from department of Semiconductor Devices, Moscow Institute of Steel & Alloys. Senior Research Scientist, Technion - IIT.
Previously: Manager and Head of research department of Scientific – Industrial Company in Moscow.
Research interests: Smart Structure Technologies, Piezoceramic and Piezoelectric Fiber Composite Technologies, Physics of Ferro-electricity, Piezoelectricity and Aero-elasticity, Flutter and Limitt Cycle Oscillations, Special Fortified Constructions. Management of teams up to 20 people, Author of seven patents and numerous publications and books.
Dr. Eugeny Tsikhotsky
Chief Technology Officer
Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics from Rostov-on-Don State University and M.Sc. from Faculty of Physics of Rostov-on-Don State University. Senior Research Scientist, Technion – IIT.
Previously: Head of the department of the new electric active materials, functional elements and transducers with active electric properties - deputy director of the Scientific and Research Institute of Physics of the Rostov State University.
Research interests: Applied physics and technology of the ferroelectric and piezoelectric materials, Applications of the active electric materials, Technologies of the materials with special properties, Development and applications of the piezoelectric transducers for the medical and other ultrasound devices.
Dr. Michael Gavshin
Senior Research Scientist
Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics from Dnepropetrovsk State University and M.Sc. in Solid State Physics from Faculty of Physics of Dnepropetrovsk State University. Senior Research Scientist, Technion – IIT.
Previously: Assistant Professor, Cybernetics - National mining university, Dnepropetrovsk.
Research interests: Ferro - and piezoelectric ceramics and monocrystals, Defectoscopy, Applications of piezoelectric materials, Software and Hardware, Growth of single crystals and production ceramics.
Dr. Lucy Edery-Azulay
Senior Technologist
& Project Manager
Ph.D., Aerospace Engineering, Technion, I.I.T.; Research subject "Integrity of Smart Structures Having Piezoelectric Patches".
Professional experience: lecturer at the faculty of Aerospace Eng., Research Associate at R&D Technion foundation, participated and led a structural analysis group for various industrial projects.
Research interests: Structronics piezolaminated intelligent-smart structures, Behavior of composite laminated structures, Stability and dynamics of thin walled structure, Space structures behavior and analysis, Applications of finite element codes for design analysis.
Author of six published papers; Participated and published in different International Conferences and Congresses.
Membership in Israel Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Israel Association for Computational Methods in Mechanics (IACMM).
Dave D 8:49PM (10/12/2009)
Ronnie,
I'm not doubting the credentials of the scientist/engineers involved. But that still doesn't mean this is a good economically sound idea. I've had large teams of PhD's working for me do some really stupid things because someone asked them to solve a problem, not decide if it was a good idea. Perhaps all the people who are in charge care about is whether or not THEY can somehow generate electricicty from this and could not care less if it causes the cars to waste energy???
The fact that they can make the road generate energy is something we can all believe. Whether or not it's a good idea and whether or not it generates more energy loss to the cars traveling over it is what we don't know.
You say that there is no additional energy spent and that this would be energy wasted on the road anyway from normal expansion/compression. I'm not sure I believe this because they work very hard to keep the wheels from compressing anymore than needed on any type of tires be there low rolling resistance street tires or metal wheels used on rail cars. I find it hard to believe there is some kind of free lunch here and that there is not some kind of additional parasitic drain from the sensors in the road making them compress an extra fraction of an inch, etc.
The most likely scenario is for a "win-win" is as people have suggeted that it be implemented where cars need to slow down anyway....unless of course the cars themselves already have regen braking LOL Then it comes down to which system is more efficient and I'd put my money on the regen braking in the cars.
The most likely scenario for all of this is that a company thought it sounded like a good "green idea" and put some smart people together to design a system that would save energy and they could sell it to stupid governments who don't know/care if it's a smart idea for the people using it...as long as it makes them seem green. Believe me, those smart people will be more than happy to sell it if someone will pay for it whether it's an net gain or a net loss to the rest of us LOL
Throwback 2:08PM (10/12/2009)
Sounds great. all we have to do is encourage more drivers, so we can get more energy to save so we..., wait a minute. Why are we doing this again?
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tortoise 2:21PM (10/12/2009)
Even if it's only where people would be braking anyway, if the vehicles have regenerative braking, this system would rob juice from them. And all vehicles will soon have regerenerative braking, right?
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