by PhilipH
(Cambridge, United Kingdom)
January 7th 2010
since: 01/03/2010, Brain-fu: 405
One wave hits each piezo unit once, simultaneously. One car drives along the whole road so does not hit all of the piezos at the same time but still hits each unit once. Please don't take my lower estimate as a criticism of your idea. People will be much more persuaded by a lower estimate that's backed up by correct assumptions than a high number that has to be revised down later when better data is available. Keep going with it!
sir the pressure produced in a car while moving is spread in its wheel but in a wave it is spread all over the wall so the piezoelectric crystals can produce electricity all over the wall
by PhilipH
(Cambridge, United Kingdom)
January 5th 2010
since: 01/03/2010, Brain-fu: 405
I stand corrected; it appears that Innowattech are indeed extracting useful amounts of power from a loading condition very like the waves.
However, using their online calculator, assuming that the action of an 'average' wave on a length of wall is equivalent to the passage of one vehicle along the same length of roadway (it's an assumption, but it'll give us an order of magnitude idea at least) and keeping your assumption of one wave every five seconds, I get a power output of 0.05 kW per metre. This is rather different to the 6250 kW you calculate! Using my value, the whole Indian coastline can generate approximately 1.6 GW of power, or 14 PWh per year of energy. Perhaps this is still enough to be interesting! Why don't you contact Innowattech and ask them if their technology would be suitable for harvesting power from waves in this manner? All the best, Philip.
Good Idea
comments
Blog
Contents
Language
Español
日本語 (JP)
Português do Brasil
语言
Português
Vote as Good Idea
Report Abuse
Build On Idea
