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Are sidewalks and roads of the future going to be generating energy to power things around them? Some embedded Piezo Generators might be just the thing we need. This is an interesting concept. Only thing is that laying a sidewalk or road with this technology is sure to be expensive. Will the energy savings outweigh the cost of installation and maintenance? Nice thing about this technology is that it isn’t obtrusive like wind generators or solar farms are.
“According to people at Innowattech the Piezo Electric Generator (IPEGâ„¢) should be able to produce 200KWh, while a four-lane highway would produce about 1MWh of electricity, per kilometer, enough to provide power to 2500 households. Considering that Israel has about 250 kilometers of roadways suitable for the technology, in terms of volumes of traffic, and the mass of vehicles taking the roads, you can very well imagine how much electricity can be produced.”