Lawrence Kemball-Cook at Loughborough University came up with a floor tile that generates power from footsteps, after seeing a growing need in cities for energy. He won the Royal Society of Arts design prize of £5000 and invested this in his new company Pavegen.

Pavegen floor tiles converts kinetic energy to electrical energy by converting the downward movement of people’s steps to rotate a flywheel, which has electromagnetic generators embedded within them. This special flooring used in public spaces presently costs 20% more than standard flooring. Some of these places receive over 30 million footsteps a year, and so the tiles have been designed with this in mind and to last at least 5 years. Pavegen employs 45 people and turns over £5 million. Projects have included, powering the lighting at West Ham tube station; power for Paris schools from the Champ-Elysees walkways. Contracts have been placed with the US federal government, including the White House; orders with JP Morgan in Los Angeles,and Nanjing University in Singapore. They have also launched a technology centre at the Future Business Centre in Cambridge, and brought in a team of scientists & engineers specialising in low-power electronics to take things further forward. (For more info:  http://pavegen.com/)

A simple yet profound idea improving today’s world

Hope you have a good month,

All the best,

Mike

Quotations:

“Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won’t expect it back.”
– Oscar Wilde

“A stockbroker urged me to buy a stock that would triple its value every year. I told him, “At my age, I don’t even buy green bananas.””
– Claude Pepper

“Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.”
– Isaac Asimov

ps  If you have enjoyed the blog please forward to those who might be interested, many thanks in advance, Mike