Roads that generate electricity from passing cars and lorries are part of a UK project aiming to introduce so-called smart infrastructure onto local road networks.
The ‘SMART Connected Community: Live Labs’ project will focus on Aylesbury with input from researchers from Lancaster University’s Department of Engineering.
Led by Buckinghamshire County Council, the project has received £4.5m in grant funding from the SMART Places Live Labs Programme and is one of eight Live Labs projects. The £23m programme, funded by the Department for Transport, is led by the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport (ADEPT).
The Live Labs project will test technological advances encompassing wireless communication sensors, smart materials, and energy generation and storage.
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Researchers from Lancaster University’s Department of Engineering will design, fabricate and test smart roads that generate power using piezoelectricity and hydromechanical dynamics from passing cars, trucks and buses.
The electricity harvested by the ‘smart’ roads will be stored by roadside batteries to power street lamps, road signs, air pollution monitors, plus sensors that detect when potholes are forming.
In addition, the smart roads will generate data on vehicle speeds, the types of vehicle travelling along the roads, as well as other information on traffic flows.
The two-year research into smart road surfaces is led by Lancaster’s Prof Mohamed Saafi.
“This is a very exciting project where we will develop novel smart road surfaces that harvest energy to power sensors that can monitor both the structural integrity of road surfaces and traffic flows – providing valuable new data streams that will help to significantly improve the efficiency of highways management and maintenance,” he said in a statement. “We see these next-generation energy harvesting road surfaces as an important part of future smart cities.”
The researchers will develop bespoke smart infrastructure designs specific to Aylesbury’s road conditions. These designs will be tested using computer simulations to determine the optimum number and locations of energy harvesting sections before being constructed and installed in Buckinghamshire.
Where does the energy come from?Is it potential energy from a momentary lowering of the vehicle? If so, it is going to result in an increase in fuel consumption.
Surely every joule harvested from the road causes at least a joule of extra work for the vehicle – 1st Law of TD?
For it to be any good, (power outputwise), it will be like driving through molasses.
Apart from stopping at a junction, if you recover energy mechanically from the road, would it be less efficient to drive on a “smart” road surface?
Basic C of E principles should render this idea moot, but alas and alack. Predictably, however, we see gov’t folks spending other people’s money (the taxpayer) on an experiment with a known outcome in conformance with physical laws. The idea is nothing more than a transfer of attribute-production, (motion being the attribute of energy as converted to the product of vehicle propulsion), with a net reduction in efficiency due to inescapable introduction of system losses, be they friction in the case of piezo, magnetic field resistance in the case of EM induction, etc. Viewed another way, the transfer of energy from vehicle to roadside is another form of a tax: An attribute of production by the individual (in this case, efficiency of mobility) has a bit siphoned off whether he/she likes it or not, for use by others in which he/she has no input. Given the environmental goals of the enterprise, there is a certain ironic symmetry in the whole scheme. Indeed a great boon to come for the grant-receivers and purveyors of the equipment, while having the shine of being Enviro-politically correct; a winning formula!
I am perturbed at the description of the technology. My undertanding of the phyics (2nd Law of Thermodynamics) suggests the system that is described is robbing Peter to pay Paul (and slicing some off on the side); if motorists are being required to use more energy (and emit more CO2) as a tax would it not be better to monitor their usage (says by road cameras) and send them a bill? (Surely this would reduce CO2 emissions – and be cheaper to implement?).
I am not sure what pitch/spin was put (or what “scoping?” studies done ) but it does not paint the Department for Transport and the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport (ADEPT) as discerning…
I’m perfectly happy for the Department for Transport and the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport (ADEPT) to attempt to overturn the laws of thermodynamics, just as long as they do it at their own personal expense. They might even come up with some new concept that they can patent and sell to collect royalties to re-imburse their expenditure – though perpetual motion machines are specifically excluded from being patented.
But please don’t tax any of my hard-earned to chase this wild goose!
Heat harvesting is low tech, simple and with a heat pump upgradable to domestic hot water ie. black heat absorbing bitumen carpark with embedded pipes enhanced GSHP Ground Sourced Heat Pump :
http://www.power-road.com
Embedded (fragile) electrical devices are a bit more doubtful.