TED Conversations

Daniel Harder

This conversation is closed. Start a new conversation
or join one »

Piezoelectricity created from cars driving to add to the grid

Imbedding rows of Piezoelectric devices like what they put in cigarette lighters into the lanes of heavy used freeways that will create electricity that can be plugged into the grid? It would take what would be other wise wasted gasoline energy and convert it to usable energy. You could make a strip about a foot wide and imbed it where the tires normally are in the lane and the force to compress it to generate the electricity to that of down force of each tire of an average weight car. Sorry about the grammar and I post it here because I didn’t know what else to do with the idea

Topics: creativity envirnoment innovation science technology
0
Share:
progress indicator

  • Charles Curt

    • 0
    Mar 16 2013: thanks and ok then that idea works you just have to spend billions to get them into the road this probably would work but the cost of it would be to much and the maintenance is also a factor it's a working idea but why spend all this money on these things that would take many many years to pay back the cost if it ever pays it back when we can just burn some coal?

  • Charles Curt

    • 0
    Mar 16 2013: because your thinking of ideas that would make the world less efficient now ok that makes sense if you put them on hills and stop signs that would actually work but that wasn't your original idea because no im not ragging on you and what do you mean proof? do you want me to calculate the resistance of the tires over that bumpy surface?? trust me this is kinda my stuff here im a studying duel degree mechanical and electrical engineer and plan on getting my masters in physics

    • Daniel Harder

      • 0
      Mar 16 2013: nice congratulations that is a big accomplishment if you noticed on my other posts I'm not talking about a bumpy surface have you ever seen the devices I'm referring to? also that I mentioned imbedding them in the ground? or that I mentioned there travel distance is about 5mm or can be engineered to travel less than 5mm also the post to peter about the flexing of the tire versus the flexing of the road? your thinking about some device you have to drive over like a speed bump I'm talking about something 5mm or less your tire flexes tire side wall flexes more than an inch as you drive depending on your tire pressure and btw I was serious about the congratulations on working on the masters it is a big life accomplishment

  • Charles Curt

    • 0
    Mar 15 2013: this is a bad idea so your saying every body should use extra gas money on giving electricity back to the government? when going over these tiny electricity generators you have to use more energy to overcome the resistance of the generators also the generators wouldn't make a lot of energy and also the cost of doing something like this to make it actually viable would be Staggering!

    • Daniel Harder

      • 0
      Mar 15 2013: I'm not saying anything I had a thought and I threw it out that to see where it leads. That is suppose to be what this site is for or so I thought? and the amount of gas energy it would take away from your car would be minimal like the amount of wasted gas when you sitting at a light and have to hold your brakes so your car wont move that is all unnecessary wasted energy because the don't want to program the computer in the car to turn off when you apply the brakes

      • Charles Curt

        • 0
        Mar 16 2013: no it would not be minimal people now days are worried about MPG more than anything this would lower gas efficiency ALOT way more than when it's idle at a stop and the energy while moving is not wasted in a car it's just not 100% efficient but this would really add a significant amount of inefficiencies please understand more about physics to understand what you are talking about

        • Daniel Harder

          • 0
          Mar 16 2013: haha your a real charmer what makes you think I don't know about physics? are you even on my post to maybe contribute to an idea like Peter Law did on his post about maybe installing on the down side of hills and coming to stop signs or are you just here to rag on someone? you say it would lower it ALOT and I should learn about physics where it your proof it would lower it ALOT??
  • thumb

    John Gianino

    • 0
    Mar 14 2013: Your idea has raised interest. Good job.
  • thumb

    Andrew Magdy Kamal

    • 0
    Mar 11 2013: What about using Hydropower for Cars?
  • thumb

    Peter Law 50+

    • 0
    Mar 10 2013: Hi Daniel.
    This reminds me of the idea that car headlights should be used in lieu of street lights. If you switch on your headlights while your car is idleing you will hear the engine take the strain, so headlights cost gas. There is no free lunch.
    I would think that as the tyre mounts the switch it will have a braking effect on the wheel, which in turn will require more gas to overcome to maintain momentum. Physics being what it is I would guess that the energy in that gas would be considerably greater than that produced by the road. 2nd. Law of Thermodynamics rules supreme!

    :-)

    • Daniel Harder

      • 0
      Mar 10 2013: I was thinking the same thing also peter but it is energy spent in waste. anyways the wheel is going to spin the pressure is still going to press down no matter if the device is there or not its more recollecting what is otherwise lost. And the way I was thinking to have the devices is with a cover over them and the compression travel of the device short so as you walk on it or drive on it it appears a hard surface when your talking about so many of them you don’t need every device to create a lot but the many creates a lot
      • thumb

        Peter Law 50+

        • 0
        Mar 11 2013: If the device goes down the wheel goes down with it. The vehicle then has to use gas to rise again. If however you use the device only on a downward slope then you are onto something. The device would try to slow the vehicle & produce power. Chances are that the vehicle would be using the device instead of brakes, which waste power anyway.
        So if we use it on downhill slopes, or at halt signs etc., where the braking force would be of benefit to the vehicle, then it would work. A financially viable system may be some way off, but the idea is sound. Big ones at busy airports would be awesome, but would need to be switchable or the planes would never get back off the ground.

        :-)

        • Daniel Harder

          • 0
          Mar 15 2013: I like what you mentioned about using it on a hill or at stop signs because then you could use a higher capacity piezo device because your just recapturing waste energy

        • Daniel Harder

          • 0
          Mar 16 2013: peter the piezo device to activate only moves 5mm from the top to the bottom to generate the energy the tire doesn't go up and down but more the sidewall of the tire flexes less think of it this way the part of the tire that contacts the ground the side wall flexes then releases if the tire is on soft ground the ground flexes either way its a loss of energy what I'm proposing is instead of releasing energy through the flexing of the tire have it released through the ground. either a soft tire on hard ground or a hard tire on soft ground there is going to be energy spent. does that make sense?
    • thumb

      Theodore A. Hoppe 200+

      • 0
      Mar 10 2013: While there is energy used in the system there may be energy that is wasted, or as in this case , energy that can be recaptured.
      Think of the inefficiency of a clothes dryer. If you can capture the exhausted heat and utilize it you've made the system more efficient. The same idea is applied to changing your engine's oil and burning it in an oil burning heater to eliminate the waste oil.
  • thumb

    Ken brown 30+

    • 0
    Mar 10 2013: We are very simple to come to the same idea as a group when the material we have to work with offers only so much lee way. Has anyone ever heard of the solar umbrella? The tops of every building in a city has a umbrella inverted or not, it doesn't matter but they unfurl during the day to catch the rays, like flowers.
  • thumb

    John Gianino

    • 0
    Mar 10 2013: Where did you here about this idea?
    • thumb

      Theodore A. Hoppe 200+

      • 0
      Mar 10 2013: He might mean "Piezoelectricity."
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piezoelectricity

    • Daniel Harder

      • +1
      Mar 10 2013: Theodore yes that is what I meant sorry for the typo and john I was explain to my kids how Piezoelectric devices work while I was driving in my car and had the idea for it. but my first idea for it was in the tire as the tire gets to the bottom of its rotation it compresses and squeezes the device creating electricity but I didn't like that so I thought maybe build it in the road. If you think about it on a car each tire of a car puts about 750 pounds of down force for a 3000 pound car the foot print of a car is about ½ a square foot. Now I don’t know any specs on the amount of energy created bye the Piezoelectric but on a cigarette lighter but looks like a lot the device is only about 6 square mm x 2cm length and can create enough spark to light the lighter. So taking the size of the foot print of the car you could put about 300ea in the same amount of area. so as the tire rolls every 6mm it presses over another row of devices creating the spark that is collected and dumped in the electric grid
  • thumb

    Ken brown 30+

    • 0
    Mar 10 2013: Great idea, there is dynamo technology that was developed in my country that is similar to what you describe but the inventor sold the tech to an American firm, sadly, no one has heard anything since then, that was 5 years ago. It took the inventor a few years to perfect it but once it was built it was surprisingly simple to construct, what's sad is that all and any links to this technology was taking down offline.

    What they couldn't do was wipe peoples memories. on the news cast it was first aired here in Nz stated just one dynamo could power a shopping mall for a day if it was placed at the carpark entrance of the mall.
    • thumb

      pat gilbert 100+

      • 0
      Mar 10 2013: Damn big evil corporations.

      Cool idea though.
      • thumb

        Ken brown 30+

        • 0
        Mar 10 2013: It was 5 years ago Pat, we had it on our television news broadcasts with the inventor and a working dynamo that powered his house built into his driveway. I don't think he sold to a corp but i do know energy companies won't make a buck if this went viral would they? Silly fool should of open sourced it with his name as the only prereq for use of it, he could of made millions on the installation techniques.

        Have you seen anything at all anywhere where this idea has been put into use? Researched? For all i know the tech might not be feasible for big power generation but for small housing, just think what the shareholders will do if it went viral and people stopped paying their power bills. You and I both know that in business it isn't at all odd to retard a new tech/technique to protect ones interest, i can't say this is the case but it was such a simple idea that it should of made waves.

        The tech is American now, so, it might be your own country that is ignoring it on purpose, who knows.
        • thumb

          pat gilbert 100+

          • 0
          Mar 10 2013: Well before we get too carried away with the rhetoric.

          What you say is non sequitur because Edison pays people to install energy saving devices. I have done it myself it is true, from more efficient lighting to solar energy generation, etc.

          What is typically the cause of something not making it to market is that it is not a viable idea or they are not able to get financing. This does not sound like a low cost invention. If anything I would suspect the government who owns the roads are the biggest road block to something like this that and the POTUS scaring off investors with his reckless activities.
      • thumb

        Ken brown 30+

        • 0
        Mar 11 2013: Yep, I forgot about who owns the roads or whether the company can get any interest from local government, i was trying to get our retired politico's to talk about it on a few of our political blogs as we are coming up to selling partial assets in our energy companies. Registration for share buying has been hot, over a hundred thousand in the first three days.

        My Q to those that were willing to talk about it was "What will happen to those shares if the populace was given a cheap and affordable offgrid power source?" Their common answer was "The provider drops the rates or folds" It was also greeted with some disdain as we tend to think of power as a collective, the grid. What if we could take housing off the grid? The idea is too far out there but so was the telephone.

        I'm sure i saw a comment here that a particular type of CO2 and pollution scrubber is the only one to be used throughout your country and that it is substandard with what is available out there, in other words, there's no need to shutdown the coal power plants. In many ways we are stopping ourselves.

        Those power saving meters? are they those prepay units?
        • thumb

          pat gilbert 100+

          • 0
          Mar 11 2013: Yes that is a typical answer. People think of government as a monolith but it is not, it is a bunch of individuals who pursue there own agenda behind the curtain of no accountability ( the monolith, especially when the government is centralized, as there is even less accountability)

          This is the more likely cause than big evil business...

    • Daniel Harder

      • 0
      Mar 10 2013: That is also a good idea Ken Brown about collecting the breaking energy from cars slowing down for street lights? Hhmm I will have to think about that more

    • Daniel Harder

      • 0
      Mar 10 2013: I post this idea here because I'm a person of limited means and no connections to people that have any venture capital to see if the idea could work. But I think it could be a good source of renewable energy and if it works maybe someone will cut me in for some credit for the idea or money if it works
Showing all 28 comments