Kinetic Energy

What kid doesn’t like kicking around a soccer ball? Imagine if this fun activity could also provide enough energy to power something useful in a modest off-grid African village, like a reliable light to cook by or an emergency mobile phone. The sOccket is a prototype soccer ball that captures kinetic energy when it is kicked or thrown, stores it in an internal battery and makes that energy available for a myriad of small but useful purposes. In other words, it’s a fun, portable energy-harvesting power source that is designed to take a kicking.  Read More

When did running get so complicated? Remember the good old days when going for a run was as easy as changing shoes and heading out the front door? Now, there’s a plethora of running gear and gadgets - ranging from heart rate monitors to state-of-the-art running shoes. It seems that not many runners leave home without their MP3 players either, but would they be prepared to work hard for their music? The Dancepants kinetic music player is a new design concept that would see runners harnessing their kinetic energy to power their music player. Yep, you’ve got to keep moving to keep grooving.  Read More

Previously, we’ve looked at technology to generate electricity from roads embedded with piezoelectric crystals that produce electricity when squeezed. Now a group of researchers is looking to shift the technology from the road to the vehicles themselves and use piezoelectrics placed on the vehicles to convert their kinetic energy into electricity.  Read More

Apparently, the ongoing testing of the MotionPower system for generating electricity from the movement of cars and light trucks - as reported here previously - is paying dividends. New Energy, the company developing the technology, reports it can produce a 25-fold increase in the system’s capacity to capture kinetic energy from moving vehicles, bringing the commercialization of the MotionPower system another step closer to reality.  Read More

Not long ago you could retire to your favorite rocking chair after a hearty evening meal and read a good book or catch up on the day’s news. But now with global warming and energy consumption going through the roof, who can relax? Thank goodness for the Murakami Chair – a rocking chair that generates enough power through its rocking motion to power its own reading lamp.  Read More

It seems that the lessons learned in developing a mechanical KERS system for F1 may yet hold the key to a low-cost, high-efficiency hybrid system particularly suited for the stop-start patterns of buses, which are quite similar to the distances between capturing and delivering energy of those of a race car. Torotrak will deliver a paper at the SAE Commercial Vehicle Congress in Illinois next week showing how flywheel KERS for buses can offer more than 30 percent fuel saving over the London bus test cycle, yet package around an existing transmission.  Read More

Listening to music became a truly personal experience when Sony first introduced the Walkman all those years ago. Technological advances since then have seen music players store more songs, become more compact and include color screens - and now they're even beginning to liberate themselves from the shackles of the battery. To achieve its battery free charge, the Chukka Kinetic Music Player combines electromagnetic induction with a unique design that positively encourages the user to twirl it around the fingers, throw it about and otherwise toy with it. The result - an eco-friendly personal media player that also gives you the recognized stress relieving benefits of tactile interaction and repetitive physical motion.  Read More

Learning more about consumption levels and investing in a standby-saver or two to cut down on waste energy is a great way to start becoming more green in the home, but there are also ways to utilize renewable energy when you're out and about.  Read More

When we first came across MotionPower, a prototype system that converts the kinetic energy from cars driving over it into electricity, we mentioned we would keep tabs on the technology to see if it could make the leap to real world implementation. Well, the company behind the MotionPower system, New Energy Technologies, has taken the next step along that road by expanding the durability field tests of the device.  Read More