With the electronic devices becoming integral part of day-to-day life, both in personal and industrial environments, the demand for energy is tremendously increasing across the globe. In the effort to find alternative sources to supplement the conventional energy sources, the energy industry has found the feasibility in fossil fuels, nuclear, thermal, hydro, solar etc.
Human body generates a lot of energy while doing the most-common activity walking. Every foot fall causes pressure when the foot hits the floor, which goes untapped. With the ground surface engineered to harvest the energy, power can be generated from the human footfalls, stored and used as a power
source or even fed to the power grid. For instance, a person dancing on an energy harvesting floor can generate 5–10 watts; in a packed dance club, the production can meet up to 60% of the total energy required for the club.
With this method energy harvesting proving its feasibility, developers of energy harvesting floors concentrating their efforts find the most-efficient way of harvesting energy from footfalls. As a result, several inventions are in the prototype stage. However, some industry players, with the aim to popularize
and establish this technology among varied consumer segment, have already initiated marketing of their products, which has been well received by environmental activists. Based on the mechanism used for converting the kinetic energy into electrical energy, footfall energy harvesting floors can be broadly classified into the following categories:
Piezoelectric — The Preferred
Though various kinds of footfall energy harvesting technologies exist, piezoelectric is the commonly-used technology. It generates energy from external force impulses or vibration in flooring, bridges, roads and structures.
Magnetic
Transducer means comprises a magnetic element and a conductive element, wherein one of the elements is movably coupled to the floor surface. When a pressure is applied on the floor surface, the conductive element cuts the magnetic flux and so current is induced in the conductive element.
Generator
A mechanical arrangement viz. hydraulic, pneumatic and spring is coupled to the floor surface, such that a rotor of a micro-generator arranged in the floor tile is driven by the mechanical arrangement when a force acts on the floor surface.
Static
A capacitor is formed in the floor tile by using two charging layers uniformly separated by a small gap, wherein one layer is coupled to the tile surface through springs. By pressing the tile surface, the gap between the layers is altered and so charges are induced in the layers. These charges can be extracted by suitably connecting the layers to an external circuit.
Source: medium