An Answer To Our Energy Crisis?

[Seil]

The Electro Kinetic Road Ramp
YouTube Vid on the Ramp

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

More than 200 local authorities had expressed an interest in ordering the £25,000 ramps to power their traffic lights and road signs, Mr Hughes said.

Around 300 jobs are due to be created in Somerset for a production run of 2,000 ramps next year.

Plates in the ramp move up and down as vehicles pass over them, driving a generator.

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

Underneath the Electro-Kinetic Road Ramp
Inventor Peter Hughes spent £1m developing the ramps

Depending on the weight of the vehicle passing overhead, between five and 50kW can be generated.

The prototype was created and tested at Hughes Research unit at the Westland Helicopter base in Somerset, at a cost of £1m.

The concept has been developed by Dorset-based Mr Hughes over the past 12 years. He recently approached councils across the country with the final patented project.

...Well... wow. This could actually work well. There's already electrical lines, telephone lines, sewer systems and whatever else running along houses - if batteries are used to store the power generated, they could potentially be sitting on a solution to energy problems world wide. Apparently these things release no emissions, have few moving parts so are easy to maintain and are cost effective.

[Kim]

If this works as well as it does it is awesome and amazing. Just so I have a frame of reference, about how much is 10kW?

Also, I can't wait to see what excuse we as a nation come up with to not implement them.

[Marc v4.0]

I used to lie awake and wonder when someone with the technical know-how would put together an effective vehicle-based energy-generating system. I honestly had to wonder why no one had yet.

Then someone did, and I feel better about everything now. Mr. President should be eating this up like delicious cake ASAP.

[Sithdarth]

This is not anywhere remotely close to a solution to any energy problem whatsoever. Well its a nice way to not waste energy but its not an energy production technology. The biggest most obvious staring you in the face problem is that cars don't go without some sort of energy source of their own. This being a relatively inefficient use of the energy of the car any attempt to power a car from it would leave you coasting to a stop pretty darn quick.The ramp is supposed to produce 5-10 kilowatts of electricity but no one mentions over what period of time. Even if it produced 10 kW every second for 24 hours that is only 240 kilowatt hours. You'd probably be lucky to get 10 effective hours of generation at full power. This brings us to the second point which is that 100kWh is a whole honking lot less than barely any power in the scheme of things even 1000 kWh is just barely barely any power in the scheme of things. The US alone uses about 3.9 TRILLION kilowatt hours of electricity a year. The US produces about 4 TRILLION kWh a year of electricity.

We're talking at least 4 million of these and then we still have that car problem. Not to mention it would be nearly impossible to implement a stable electric grid with these things. There would be no real way to guarantee the baseload let alone the intermediate or peak loads. The reserve is totally out of the question. All other considerations aside the complexity of running a stable electrical grid prohibits the use of one type of power generation.

[Marc v4.0]

I think we could fit 4 million of them, and it's at least a step in the right direction, but I don't think anyone is seriously considering replacing entire grids to rely on these things, that's just a fanciful thought right now. Supplimental energy is nice, though.

And I don't think they wanted to power the CAR from it, that's an even worse idea.

[Sithdarth]

I think we could fit 4 million of them, and it's at least a step in the right direction, but I don't think anyone is seriously considering replacing entire grids to rely on these things, that's just a fanciful thought right now. Supplimental energy is nice, though.

And I don't think they wanted to power the CAR from it, that's an even worse idea.

1) 4 million is a giant number. Given the relatively small number of areas where these plates would be feasible it is impossible. Just for reference these plates basically replace speed bumps and would basically have to be driven over once every couple of minutes at least 10 hours a day to come even close to 100 kWh in a day. I doubt we have 4 million places that need speed bumps much less 4 million places that need speed bumps that get traffic that heavy 10 hours a day. The actual number might be closer to 10,20 or even 40 million.

2) The title of the thread is "An Answer To Our Energy Crisis?" which it clearly isn't

3) Any energy solution would involve the replacement of fossil for the movement of cars. The best solution is of course batteries and electric motors. If a significant amount of power were coming from electrics running over these plates to generate electric power we would have a big problem.

Edit: Damn it and being so late my number was off. Its closer to 4 hundred thousand or a little less depending with less than peak production. That's still a ridiculously huge number.

[Kim]

You said it doesn't say how much it takes to create 10kW. It creates that much energy every time a car drives over it. That's what the article says. So, every single time a car drives over it you get 10kW, which adds up pretty fast.

The whole thing about cars still needing power and whatnot... Yes, they do, but that power is going to be spent regardless, so maybe we could have the power already being spent also go to creating some energy as well.

Yes, the thread title is a misnomer. However, just because it isn't, "Hey! Never have to use any fuel source again ever!" doesn't mean you should just dismiss it. I mean, with that logic... Wind power doesn't power everything. Fuck that. Solar power doesn't power everything. Fuck that. Etc. Etc. Guess we better keep using the hell outta gas since the other energy sources only lessen how much we'd need to use gas and don't replace it completely yet.

[Sithdarth]

You said it doesn't say how much it takes to create 10kW. It creates that much energy every time a car drives over it. That's what the article says. So, every single time a car drives over it you get 10kW, which adds up pretty fast.

The kilowatt is not, I repeat NOT, a unit of energy. It is a unit of power which is the rate at which energy is produced. 10 kW for 10 seconds is about .0277 kWh. The kWh actually being a unit of energy.

The whole thing about cars still needing power and whatnot... Yes, they do, but that power is going to be spent regardless, so maybe we could have the power already being spent also go to creating some energy as well.

Except the energy being used to move the car is already being used to move the car and could be much more efficiently and consistently reused by regenerative breaking. It also prevents this from ever being a solution to any energy crisis.

Yes, the thread title is a misnomer. However, just because it isn't, "Hey! Never have to use any fuel source again ever!" doesn't mean you should just dismiss it. I mean, with that logic... Wind power doesn't power everything. Fuck that. Solar power doesn't power everything. Fuck that. Etc. Etc. Guess we better keep using the hell outta gas since the other energy sources only lessen how much we'd need to use gas and don't replace it completely yet.

Except that you can easily get 20% of your power from wind alone. Heck if you really wanted to there is enough wind power in the US to meet at least 4 times our electricity demand. World Wide there is enough wind power to meet the World's electricity demand at least 9 times over. Not sure of the scale of solar but I'd guess its similar. Any purposed solution to be taken seriously has to at least break 10% and this clearly can't.

[Arhra]

Don't forget this may not be cost effective.

Let's see. Saying an average price for electricity per kWh is 12 cents USD, and it generates the stated maximum possible power of 10kW for ten hours a day. Exchange rate gives a cost per ramp of about $35,000.

So generating a total of 100kWh a day, which is being extremely generous, it will have paid for itself in eight years.

Not too shabby actually. But, this is extremely optimistic and ignores maintenance costs. Just how long do the ramps last before needing to be replaced anyway? There's not many high traffic areas you could put it in either seeing the thing's essentially a speed bump.

Basically, the applications for it are pretty limited.

[Kim]

Originally Posted by Sithdarth

Except the energy being used to move the car is already being used to move the car and could be much more efficiently and consistently reused by regenerative breaking. It also prevents this from ever being a solution to any energy crisis.

I admit I am not as knowledgeable as I would like to be on the subject, and apologize for arguing where I had no place. That said, I just looked up regenerative breaking and it seemed like it had only been done with trains. Is it something that could be done with cars, and would doing that exclude the possibility of doing this as well?