I'm paying the council's electric twice now?

[aldi]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/somerset/4535408.

It's a pretty inefficient way of generating electricity if you ask me - I buy petrol, drive my car over a ramp which slows it down by 0.1mph and gets the council some electricity. Why not just put a penny on council tax??

Having said that, it might be an idea for rural situations where running running leccy might be expensive? But then you couldnt rely on it exclusively so it becomes pretty pointless...


Any thoughts??

[alfaman]

I guess the main purpose would be to be able to put in new lights etc. without digging up all the road for cabling ?? - but the road would still need digging up for the ramp (?)

[motco]

BBC said:

Dorset inventor Peter Hughes' Electro-Kinetic Road Ramp creates around 10kW of power each time a car drives over its metal plates.

For about half a second; hardly worth the cost.

[D_Mike]

They'd be better off doing a similar thing with pavements - they'd need squidgy surfaces though. Generate electricity for free and make people do a bit more excercise when walking!

[polus]

Oh god...

[D_Mike]

THinking about it a bit more... you'd need some sort of piezoelectric material under the pavement, or you could use some squidgy bags filled with "something" that is propelled out of the bag when pressure is exerted on the bag through the pavement by a person above. The "stuff" (liquid) could turn a turbine and then then when people step off the squidgy bag the liquid would just flow back... (can you get a turbine to generate power turning both ways?).

hmm...

edit: thinking even more about it, you could probably turn it around and rather than use pavements for municipal power generation use shoes for personal power generation, for phones and iPods and stuff.

>> Edited by D_Mike on Saturday 17th December 12:15

[MilnerR]

bbc said:

The ramp is silent, comfortable and safe for vehicles," Mr Hughes said.

I can see cyclists being catapulted through the air on cold dark mornings!

[polus]

MilnerR said:

bbc said: The ramp is silent, comfortable and safe for vehicles," Mr Hughes said. I can see cyclists being catapulted through the air on cold dark mornings!

And thats a bad thing?

[trackcar]

has that car reversed over the ramp or has that piccie been badly staged for the cameras?

I can't see that vertical face being silent or kind on cars at all.

[fid]

Was reading about them a couple of days ago. Stupid idea, if you ask me. They'll need maintaining, which will mean closing the road, and they'll have to suit a whole range of vehicle weights...can't see a 1,500 Kg car moving it at the same rate as a 40,000 Kg truck!

[MilnerR]

polus said:

And thats a bad thing?

I never said that was a bad thing

[love machine]

Jesus christ I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS PSEUDO-ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY SHITE!

How much electrical energy is spent creating the thing? PROBABLY MORE THAN IT PRODUCES IN IT'S LIFETIME, hook the frigging lights up to a bloody nuclear power station. What is more irritating is people actually give these stupid ideas time of day. Can we please have a bit of sense? This is a wind up, right?

[Pigeon]

Yeah, looks like nobody's done any calculations on overall conversion efficiency... it looks like a very inefficient way of powering lights off fossil fuel compared to a power station. For it to be "sound" would require it to be able to capture the energy dissipated as the car brakes for the bump. As it is, all it does is enable the council to save on their electricity bills by stealing pennies out of peoples' fuel tanks. I reckon everyone in the area should get a 2CV and drive over the ramps as fast as possible to minimise their effectiveness.

trackcar said:

has that car reversed over the ramp or has that piccie been badly staged for the cameras? I can't see that vertical face being silent or kind on cars at all.

It's a bad photo. It only looks like there's a vertical face. On closer inspection you can see there's an equally shallow ramp on the other side as well, it just doesn't look like it.

[esselte]

10Kw!?

[The Wiz]

love machine said:

Jesus christ I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS PSEUDO-ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY SHITE! How much electrical energy is spent creating the thing? PROBABLY MORE THAN IT PRODUCES IN IT'S LIFETIME, hook the frigging lights up to a bloody nuclear power station. What is more irritating is people actually give these stupid ideas time of day. Can we please have a bit of sense? This is a wind up, right?

Of course this isn't a wind up ... look at Wind Power ...its just the mad mad world we live in today.