Harvesting Alternative Energy From Countless Walking Feet

Forget harvesting corn for ethanol and consider the potential energy in 6.6 billion pairs of feet. That's what "Crowd Farming" aims to do, by using innovative technologies beneath sidewalks and flights of stairs.

It's a cutting-edge area of research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Every footfall gives off enough power, according to a story in the Christian Science Monitor, to light two 60-watt bulbs for one second. But multiply each individual's footfalls by the number of people walking through a busy train station, say, and you've suddenly transformed Grand Central Terminal into Grand Central Power Plant.

If each takes just 120 steps, they've created enough energy to send a rocket into space. In a general way, the line of thinking that inspires "Crowd Farming" is the way of the future. Scientists and engineers are working on countless projects to harvest wasted or unused energy -- whether its the excess heat from a turbine used to melt snow on sidewalks, or the motion energy of the feet walking across that same sidewalk. So expect to hear more in the coming years about piezoelectricity -- the science of drawing power from the motion of people.

COMMENTS ()