Ramp creates power as cars pass - used to power traffic lights & more.

[chcarnage]

Originally posted by: Eli

Originally posted by: Fenixgoon

Originally posted by: Amused
10-50kW? Can anyone put that into perspective for me?

1 kWh (kilowatt-hour) = 3600 kilowatts.

you are billed for electricity by amount of kWh used.

if you put that in a high traffic area, it could generate some serious power

WTF????

1kWh(kilowatt-hour) is something that uses 1,000 watts in 1 hour.

Energy: Measured in Joules
Examples: It takes 9.81 Joules to lift a 1 kg object 1 meter. A car (1 ton) driving 100 km/h has a kinetic energy of 386 KiloJoule. A battery or a bomb stores a certain amount of energy.

Performance, Power: Measured in Watt = Joules per Second.
Examples: JohnCU's power plant has an output of 900 MegaWatt. A professional biker performs up to 1.5 KiloWatt during a brief time. A laptop consumes 25 Watts (he needs energy constantly) A battery has a performance of a certain number of Watts during a limited time.


Energy sometimes is measured in other units like kWh

1kWh = the amount of energy produced in 1 hour by something that performs with 1 kW.

1kWh = 3600 seconds * 1000 Watts = 3600'000 Joules = 3.6 MegaJoules

 

[DrPizza]

Wow, I had entertained at one time the idea of lining roads with piezoelectric ceramics (pushbutton ignitions for grills, etc.)
Then, I realized the conservation of energy concept. Nonetheless, I figured that if I lived along a really busy street, maybe I could steal all the power I needed to run a toaster.

Anyway, I'll toss out another idea for the calculation:
Screw the "produces 5 to 40 kilowatts" - that doesn't matter, as it's not a continuous production. That's called marketing hype.
There's an easier way to figure this:

Assume ALL the energy comes from the plate pushing down: (the article says the power depends on the weight of the vehicle, and looking at the ramp, this seems to be a reasonable assumption)
2000 kilogram car, mass evenly divided over the two axles (this really doesn't matter), 1 inch (2.54cm) drop.
And, of course, we'll assume 100% efficiency (for simplicity's sake)
Now, each car is going to push the ramp thingy down twice, once for the front, and once for the back.
Simple conservation of energy: PE=mgh = 1*10^3kg*9.8m/s^2*2.54*10^-2m = about 250 joules, each time an axle passes over the plate.

It really doesn't matter how many watts are produced... what really matters is the amount of energy produced. 500 joules per 2000kg car. Want the power? For 5 kw, the car goes over the ramp in 1/10 of a second.

So, to keep a 50 watt lightbulb lit for one hour, you need 50watt-hours or 180,000 Joules of energy.
That means 360 cars per hour, each being sapped of 500 joules.

How many watts are traffic lights?? (especially if they use the LED lights?)


edit: ooops, left the 0's out of 2000. Silly me, thinking of 000 as kilo. I guess what I meant was 2 kilo kilograms 😛 (or 2*10^3 kilograms, as I used correctly in my calculations)

 

[Rubycon]

2 gram cars? Are you the easter bunny? 😉

Piezoelectrics are neat but they do wear and produce a really weird output unlike a dynamo. Of course that's an entirely different discussion altogether.

Speaking of dynamos, most can be reversed and function like a motor. I wonder if the cops could use these as a form of car disabling device in the event of a chase?

 

[jsbush]

Forget the parts freezing in winter time. What about the snow plow, lol. YOu know how slow theyd need to plow the highways at to avoid damging these.

 

[DrPizza]

ooops! I was thinking 2000 kilograms, and somehow my head automatically switched the thousand to kilo as I typed it in.

I'll fix it 🙂

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: C6FT7
2 gram cars? Are you the easter bunny? 😉

Piezoelectrics are neat but they do wear and produce a really weird output unlike a dynamo. Of course that's an entirely different discussion altogether.

Speaking of dynamos, most can be reversed and function like a motor. I wonder if the cops could use these as a form of car disabling device in the event of a chase?

I like the RFID idea that's been tossed around... somehow making it possible for police to remotely disable a vehicle. Of course, at the same time, I'm going to market my anti RFID device to the tinfoil hat crowd. (Ironically, it's a very similar product: window screen 😛 )

 

[Evadman]

To pull 10kw from normal traffic, you would be slowing down the car quite a bit as it hit the plate. I am too lazy to do the calculations, but my rough estimation puts 10kw at a 2 ton car at a drop in speed from 30 to 20. That would freak me out if I drove over it.

If that were true, why don't we put these on the end of airport runways and deploy them at landing? You could stop a plane before it ended up out on Cicero Ave 😛

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: Zenmervolt

Originally posted by: destrekor
when something that can move vertically on a dime is only an inch or two tall, it wont take much to move it. you tire striking it in the front likely pushes it downward at the same time, meaning your car rides over it like nothing was there. and the other plate likely pushes up for your read wheels to do the same thing. it actually would make sense if the front plate is up first, as soon as the tires hit it, it slides down pushing the other one up, which as the front wheels pass over the first one and touch the second it, it forces that one down and repeats the sequence for the rear wheels.

hmm makes sense, and again looks like it would easily move downward with the forward momentum of a car, without any hesitation.

Nope. Nice try, but you fail physics.

Energy can neither be created, nor destroyed, only converted. The energy produced by the system has to come from the cars' momentum, which needs to be replenished by the engine. Because of the nature of power generation, more energy is subtracted from the vehicle's momentum than is generated by the device.

The energy is, in effect, coming from the cars.

ZV

you haven't said anything to contradict his post. nice try, but you fail at arguing. his post was entirely about the shock you would feel in the car. he doesn't think you'd feel much bump at all, because the plate would move easily, 'without any hesitation' as it were.

 

[chcarnage]

Originally posted by: JohnCU

Originally posted by: chcarnage

Originally posted by: JohnCU
You're using very simple equations for a real-life situation. That stuff they teach you in Physics with the simple equations doesn't exactly hold true in the real world.

I'd like to have precise numbers from this company regarding their idea of "average traffic" but had to invent one by myself, and to keep it simple I calculated with a 100% efficient kinetic energy to current converter (anything less would be to the disadvantage of the ramp).

So, if my calculation is right, there must stop one car per five seconds with a mass of 1.3 tons driving at least 23 km/h on the ramp to allow an outpot of 5 kW. There's no reason why Newtonian physics aren't good enough for this situation, this are everyday dimensions.

The calculation may not be precise, but it shows that it's impossible for a one-lane ramp with "average traffic" to reach an output of 5 kW, let alone 10 kW.

I'm not debating Newtonian physics vs. Quantum mechanics use here but I'm just saying this "machine" or system if you will is much more complex than seen on the surface, which involves much more complex analysis with differential equations, etc.

Yes I used a simplified formula but principally speaking nothing else is happening here than a conversion of kinetical energy (moving mass, read, car) to electric energy. Every eliminated complexity only can lower the power output of the ramp because I'm already calculating with a perfect efficiency and the law of energy conservation makes a higher output impossible. I've done nothing more than to calculate the least velocity required to cross this ramp for a certain number of cars with a certain mass per time, given the electric output of the ramp.

 

[DaiShan]

Originally posted by: ScottSwingleComputers

Originally posted by: Remy XO
that looks bad for low profile cars

Its hard to tell from the pic, but it can't be more than an inch off the ground, if that. If you have a car that is THAT low profile, I dont see how you can drive it anywhere aside from a race track.

Yeah, my Enzo definitely couldn't make it over that 😛

 

[Oscar1613]

diagram from his site

rehosted it cause it was ginormous and his site runs at about 5k/s