Crowd Farming

Posted on November 30, 2009
Filed Under Uncategorized |

By Lauren Ellis

One human step can power two 60-watt light bulbs for barely a second. But 28,527 steps can generate enough electricity to power a moving train for one second. Capturing the collective energy of mindless human movement- shoppers in a mall or commuters in a subway for instance- is what crowd farming is all about.

That’s the idea behind the new technology engineered by two MIT students James Graham and Thaddeus Juscyzyk. Crowd farming harnesses the power of human energy into a convertible source of electricity. It can be used to power signage, doorways, sound, light, and machines- the possibilities are endless.

From Juscyzyk and Graham:

“A Crowd Farm in Boston’s South Station railway terminal would work like this: A responsive sub-flooring system made up of blocks that depress slightly under the force of human steps would be installed beneath the station’s main lobby. The slippage of the blocks against one another as people walked would generate power through the principle of the dynamo, a device that converts the energy of motion into that of an electric current.”

The key concept behind crowd farming is piezoelectricity, or the science of harnessing power from mechanical stress. The two inventors have also developed a prototype chair. Who knew that sitting could generate enough power to turn on four LED lights?!

When asked about the real life application of their new technology, Graham quipped, “We joke that we’re at the level of computers in the ‘60s when they were giants and clunky and took up entire rooms.”

While cost effectiveness and scale are the major barriers of this new technology, a market adaptation of the crowd farming concept is already in the works. Elizabeth Redmond, a finalist of the MIT Ignite Clean Energy Competition, has developed POWERleap, a new flooring system that utilizes piezoelectricity from pedestrian and vehicle traffic. The flooring system can be used in city sidewalks, dance clubs, airport terminals, gyms, and sports stadiums, and any other urban areas subject to high volumes of foot traffic.

So, until we travel everywhere via hover-technology (See: Back to the Future II), developing technology that yields power from the steps we take sounds like a brilliant plan.

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