Pavegen to provide Canary Wharf with sustainable energy boost

Pavegen’s flooring technology consists of slabs made from recycled rubber and polymer concrete that convert the weight of a footstep into renewable electricity. When a slab is stepped on it deflects the top sheet by 5mm, and the movement is converted to electricity, which is delivered in to a regulated 12V feed.

Unlike other energy harvesting systems, Pavegen’s technology does not rely on piezoelectricity, where energy spikes make it very hard to give a constant flow of energy. Each step on a Pavegen slab contains enough energy to power an LED streetlamp for 30 seconds. The energy conserved can also be stored in lithium polymer batteries underneath the floor to be used at a later date.

The technology was a finalist in the Cognicity Challenge award, a scheme run by the Canary Wharf Group to help small and medium businesses set up pilot projects and grow. With 100 thousand commuters passing through Canary Wharf each day, the public spaces are an ideal place to place the tiles in order to gather footfall data as well as generating renewable energy.