SKIRMISHER

Those massive hordes of urban commuters now have another use—aside from serving as warm bodies for instant urban mobs, audience to power up public speeches of demagogues, eager volunteers to public lynching, and critters Godzilla just love stomping on, Japan’s East Japan Railway Company and Keio University have found a way to harvest electricity from people passing through ticket gates at train stations.

Chunichi Shimbun reports on

“…an experimental system that produces electricity as people pass through ticket gates. JR claims that this sort of human-powered electricity generation system may provide a portion of the electricity consumed at train stations in the future.

The ticket gate electricity generation system relies on a series of piezo elements embedded in the floor under the ticket gates, which generate electricity from the pressure and vibration they receive as people step on them. When combined with high-efficiency storage systems, the ticket gate generators can serve as a clean source of supplementary power for the train stations. Busy train stations (and those with large numbers of passengers willing to bounce heavily through the gates) will be able to accumulate a relatively large amount of electricity.

JR-East, who worked with Keio University to develop the system, claims that in addition to being put to use as an independent power supply that does not require hardwiring, the system can also be used as a way of measuring the traffic flow through ticket gates.

But why stop at ticket gates? The next step should be installing these “electricity-generating floors” on entire stretches of busy roads, or on secluded park areas where doggers love rolling on and screw. I think the latter might even produce thrice more electricity.

via PINKTENTACLE

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