I Like this Idea: Electricity from gravity. DUH why didn't I think of this !

KellyPrettyBear
reply to post by Astyanax

 

Exactly.

Basic science.

But on the other hand, things like wave power are
legitimate ways to 'capture gravitational potential'
(the sun is the main source of energy for Earth, but
the moon's tugging on the Earth gravitationally
does cause waves).

It certainly is just providing a preferred path for
entropy, but that's pretty much how directed
energy production works.

KPB

Agreed, the more ways the merrier, look at this serious proposal by the Japanese to harness solar enery via the Moon, and they are motivated, because of their nuclear energy instability,



You'll find the story at the OP's link as well, that's where I picked it up, then I found a youtube sample.

Bedlam
It makes the vehicles burn more fuel than you get back from the system. By far.

So you are saying on an area of street where there is no car, and an area of street where there is currently a car, the area with the car is not experiencing the weight of the cars mass? Or you are saying in order to absorb that energy it would be taking away energy from the car, that is not taken away in normal circumstances when a car is just on the street? If there was technology, a material that when you placed the weight of your hand on it, the material had mechanisms and wires under it that it could absorb the energy of your hand and send it to a storage, somehow this was possible, you are saying it would have to take more energy away from your hand and body, then if you were to just place your hand on a table, or sponge?

reply to post by smurfy


I dont know why they would collect all that energy on the moon, and then send it to earth how the sun sends the same energy to earth. Why wouldnt they just build that on earth and collect solar energy on earth, deserts for example.

The relative worth of system such as this would be the cost of installation vs return plus the average cost of repair/replacement and life of said system.
What might seem a great deal is negated if you have to tear up the road every 7 years to replace hoses. Even a bellows has moving parts which are bound to break eventually.

I like the windmill idea along interstates although I'm afraid it would be a raptor trap since their prey is often found along roadways in the weeds and grass.

Geothermal and tidal energy seem to offer the most return with the least environmental damage. Much more can be done to implement their usage particularly in the US.

ImaFungi
reply to post by smurfy

 

I dont know why they would collect all that energy on the moon, and then send it to earth how the sun sends the same energy to earth. Why wouldnt they just build that on earth and collect solar energy on earth, deserts for example.

I suppose for much the same reasoning as the hydraulic, and piezo systems mentioned in this OP, to get as much efficiency as possible in harnessing and delivery. In the atmosphere there is diffusion, in space there is less loss and the eternal source, the Sun... open 24/7

Asktheanimals
The relative worth of system such as this would be the cost of installation vs return plus the average cost of repair/replacement and life of said system.
What might seem a great deal is negated if you have to tear up the road every 7 years to replace hoses. Even a bellows has moving parts which are bound to break eventually.

Not taking away from what you say, it just makes me laugh when I consider what they do here. They dig up the roads in this locale every fart's end, (maybe they are working on the ideas mentioned here). They used to say Britain was a nation of shopkeepers, well that is not true, there is about a third of Brits who do nothing but dig holes..then spend good time staring down them

Bedlam
It makes the vehicles burn more fuel than you get back from the system. By far.

Not if the system were set up on the downhill side of sloped roadways.

The car has to expend energy to get to the top of the hill or overpass. It has excess power on the downhill side.

Bigfatfurrytexan, even nano generators would waste a cars power. To get these things to make power, they have to dimple and depress where the wheel sits, there has to be a compressable spot. Even if that spot is 1mm it still robs the car of non-ambient power. Pot holes and uneven spots don't cost a thing to maintain and are also power robbers. Even the road its self deforms a bit and robs power, if you could use hardend steel of a thickness that will not deform, you would get better mileage.

Ambient noise collecters are great though as long as the power gained outweighs the cost.

It seems many members here have a severe lack of technical knowledge, and evidence by people's support of this technology. It's obvious why people believe in suppressed tech and all that when they simply cannot understand the actual forces behind such idea.

Simply put, these devices mentioned in the OP are NOT recovering wasted energy. They are SAPPING energy from your car. This is quite literally a tax on transportation, as you are directly funding and powering these generators. This would be, in effect, no different than having a law that every driver must donate 1/4 gallon of gas to the local energy plant for every 100 miles driven or whatever the numbers work out to be.

ALL the energy these devices collect is NOT collecting wasted energy, it's just going a large roundabout way to steal energy from your GAS TANK IE fossil fuels, and fossil fuels you personally and directly paid money for.

Someone mentioned having these on down-hill roads only. That would be an excellent idea. If you are already breaking, you are wasting energy, and that energy can be collected.

But simply putting these anywhere you want isn't going to collect or generate any energy, it's simply and literally stealing gas from your gas tank.

And we are already generating power from gravity, how do you think a hydroelectric power plant works? Even that isn't ACTUALLY powered by gravity, hydroelectric power plants, in actuality, are still solar power plants. All the power a damn makes is infused into the system from the sun, by way of the sun's energy evaporating water (fighting against gravity) so that you can extract energy on the downturn of that water.

727Sky If you think about all the forces wasted without effort to recover them this might be a grand plan. Better than ocean wave electric generation IMO .

The biggest problem is, these are not wasted forces that you're sucking away.

You're taking them directly from the forward momentum of the car. That's what the car's designed to do. It's not like you're making energy from waste engine heat.

AliceBleachWhite

May as well do the same thing on every urban sidewalk, and doorway.

If you want tired, miserable pedestrians. It's the same problem there, too.

bigfatfurrytexan
reply to post by 727Sky

 

I have often pondered on the use of ambient energy. Back when I authored threads, I had several that discussed ideas similar to this.

One that I still think should be explored is the usage of nanogenerators that can utilize various frequencies such as Schumann Resonance, which generate minute amounts of electricity individually. But if you had billions embedded within building materials......

"Nano" and "Schumann" don't go together. Also, there's bupkis total power in the E-I waveguide, so even if you harvested it all, you wouldn't have but a few hundred watts total, worldwide.

There's also not much total power in radio waves hitting a building, so even if you scavenged 100% of it, you won't have more than a few Watts. With so little total power, you will never reach payback, even if you can get all of it. And you've got to have a system that's SO good that you don't leak more power than you scavenge.

bigfatfurrytexan

If you use nanogenerators, you are essentially just capturing kinetic energy that is already being sent through the asphalt/concrete.

Kinetic energy isn't sent through asphalt.

There is no shortage of ambient energy. From the audible to the completely inaudible. We just need to get the correct wavelength in the capacity off the generators levers to be able to tap into that ambient energy.

Sure there is. The shortage of it is, there's not much of it. You can't capture more of it than there is. And it's low-grade energy, so it's inefficient to capture.

727Sky

Bedlam
It makes the vehicles burn more fuel than you get back from the system. By far.

you may be correct but in city traffic I find it hard to believe a five centimeters above street level would out weigh the cost of fuel burn. If that is the case from the little electric speed bumps then IMO pave the whole street with the cells in a continuous smooth overlay.

I would think Improperly inflated tires sage more than 5 cm together and while true there is some fuel efficiency loss it is not noticeable to most drivers . Guess we will have to wait and see who installs this setup which may be Mexico city and look at the numbers it produces.

Where do you think the energy is coming from? It's 5cm, but you are always rolling up that hill anytime you are moving. It's not like you go up 5cm and you're done with it. It's like one of those endless stairclimber machines, it's only six feet tall but you never get to the top of it.

Consider this. You ever ride a bike? Easier to ride it on pavement, right? How is it when you're in ankle deep thick grass? Does the level of work increase? You bet. Same thing.

theantediluvian
reply to post by 727Sky

 

As one poster remarked, there is a limit to something like the floor tiles as well but as long as the contact forces between the foot and the tiles are equivalent to those of walking on a normal floor, there's no extra energy required by the person walking to generate electricity.

But the tiles are NOT like walking on a normal floor. The amount of piezoelectric energy you get is proportional to the amount of deflection. If you make it fairly rigid, you're not going to get much energy. The mushier you make the floor, the more energy you'll get. So you are back to making it like walking on sand if you want much out of it. It all comes back to the energy coming from YOU, directly. If it's pleasant to walk on, it's not making much energy.

Astyanax
Simple it is, but it doesn't apply here.

It ALWAYS applies. And it especially applies here, because you're tapping that energy right off the car's forward motion. It's not efficient. It's just got a layer of abstraction in so you don't see that it's as bad an idea as it is.

Astyanax
reply to post by Bedlam

 

Not sure I see why. Presumably the extra fuel consumption would be occasioned by the car engine having to compensate for the momentum lost to the obstacle that is formed by the 'lip' created when the bellows compresses under its wheels?

You never get over that "lip", it's always there. You're always rolling over it. That's where the energy is coming from, and it's not waste energy, you're just sucking energy out of the car's forward motion. Unfortunately, that's the primary function of the car.

This could be avoided by installing the bellows on a downslope. It would then act as a kind of moving step to lower the car from one level of the road to the next. Any momentum lost would then be made up by gravity acting on the car.

Well, sort of. Most people don't maintain a rigidly fixed speed going up and down hills. It's MOST fuel efficient if you let the car accelerate going downhill and use that kinetic energy to help you go up the next. But you end up with an uneven speed. In this case, you're tapping off the energy the engine pumped into the car to get it to the top of the hill. That's not wasted if you let the car speed up on the downside.

ImaFungi

Bedlam
It makes the vehicles burn more fuel than you get back from the system. By far.

So you are saying on an area of street where there is no car, and an area of street where there is currently a car, the area with the car is not experiencing the weight of the cars mass? Or you are saying in order to absorb that energy it would be taking away energy from the car, that is not taken away in normal circumstances when a car is just on the street? If there was technology, a material that when you placed the weight of your hand on it, the material had mechanisms and wires under it that it could absorb the energy of your hand and send it to a storage, somehow this was possible, you are saying it would have to take more energy away from your hand and body, then if you were to just place your hand on a table, or sponge?

Having a lot of trouble parsing this for meaning.

You seem to be conflating 'weight', 'mass', and 'energy'. They aren't the same things.

A weight placed on a concrete floor isn't expending energy. The floor doesn't expend energy. The weight doesn't expend energy. Nothing's moving. A car sitting on a street isn't providing energy to the street. A car not sitting on the street doesn't provide energy to the street.

If you want a mental picture, consider kneeling on a surface with one of those physics demo bicycle wheels with handles in your hands. If the floor's hard concrete, it won't be hard at all to roll that wheel back and forth with most of your weight on it. If the floor's dense sponge rubber, it will be a lot harder to push.

badgerprints

Bedlam
It makes the vehicles burn more fuel than you get back from the system. By far.

Not if the system were set up on the downhill side of sloped roadways.

The car has to expend energy to get to the top of the hill or overpass. It has excess power on the downhill side.

Not really. On the downhill side, you either let the car build up speed for the next hill (constant throttle), or you throttle back and use less fuel on the downside of the hill. Either way, you get back some of the energy that was pumped into the car going up the hill. Or, you ride the brakes on the way down and turn it into heat if you don't have a hybrid. A hybrid car would put some of the energy back into the battery.

But with this system, none of this would apply, you'd just lose it to the inefficient generation system in the roadway.

Bedlam

badgerprints

Bedlam
It makes the vehicles burn more fuel than you get back from the system. By far.

Not if the system were set up on the downhill side of sloped roadways.

The car has to expend energy to get to the top of the hill or overpass. It has excess power on the downhill side.

Not really. On the downhill side, you either let the car build up speed for the next hill (constant throttle), or you throttle back and use less fuel on the downside of the hill. Either way, you get back some of the energy that was pumped into the car going up the hill. Or, you ride the brakes on the way down and turn it into heat if you don't have a hybrid. A hybrid car would put some of the energy back into the battery.

But with this system, none of this would apply, you'd just lose it to the inefficient generation system in the roadway.

Most vehicles use brakes going downhill.
Just a fact.