They say that business is all about people power, but what if that was literal instead of theoretical? Engineering company Pavegen has made it so with a simple floor tile that uses steps to create energy and store and map data. Is the future of a sustainable built environment beneath our feet? asks Samantha McClary
Pavegen looks like a simple floor tile. And that’s exactly what inventor and chief executive of Pavegen, Laurence Kemball-Cook, says it is. A simple floor tile that is made clever by the people who walk over it.
But how exactly does it work? Power is generated when the tile is compressed. It uses the piezoelectric effect – the ability of certain materials to generate an electrical current when compressed – as well as induction, through numerous tiny copper coils and magnets, to create a charge.
The latest version of the tile, launched this week, generates enough current to power a light for 70 seconds from just three footsteps, and generates 200 times more power than the prototype, launched back in 2009.
How much power does a Pavegen tile generate? That depends on its fundamental renewable energy source – people.
How many people will walk over the array of tiles, how heavy are they, and how fast are they walking? The latest tile, says Kemball-Cook, is able to capture much more energy because of its new triangular shape.
“One footstep triggers three or four generators,” he says. “There are no dead spots. Before [when the tile was square] only 20% of steps would be in the right place. This way you are almost guaranteeing 100%.”
Pavegen believes that 270 tiles in an area of 80 sq m (861 sq ft) will generate 1kW of power from 120 pedestrians. This amount of power per hour enables you to watch six episodes of the latest series of Game of Thrones on your plasma TV or type away on your laptop for as much as 20 hours.
To illustrate the potential of the tile, Pavegen uses an example based on pedestrian traffic on one of London’s busiest streets, Oxford Street. The prediction assumes that all pedestrians walk across two 17m arrays of tiles.
Weekday pedestrian numbers on Oxford Street total around 138,000, according to Gehl Architects, but can rise to 500,000 at peak times. Based on these figures, Pavegen reckons it could yield 3,200 watt hours a day. This is enough energy to light the main thoroughfare of Oxford Street even through the darkest winter night.
Solid ground or sunshine?
Kemball-Cook began his career in engineering trying to find solar and wind solutions for energy generation. He admits that he failed. He also admits that the energy-generating solution he has come up with is one that has its own many and varied issues.
“We are engineering in one of the harshest environments known to man,” he says. “The tile has to have extremely high fatigue resistance, and stand up to vandalism as well as extreme weather, from -40 degrees to +100.”
But he and his team at Pavegen will argue that, despite all that, it still offers a more usable solution to the built environment than wind and solar energy.
There is more floorspace than usable real estate for solar, says Pavegen, particularly in inner cities due to shadowing from buildings. And unlike solar, which is limited to daylight hours and peaks around midday, power by Pavegen can be generated around the clock as long as there are people moving.
Using its Oxford Street example, Pavegen believes it would need only 114,000 pedestrians a day to walk down the famous street to match the energy produced by solar.
Data proposition
The new tile is no longer just about energy production, however. It is about data mapping and storage. The tile, which is both Bluetooth- and WiFi-enabled, now provides analyses of consumer patterns by tracking footfall and heat mapping.
“We have created a product that can reshape the way people move in our cities, and with current digitisation, our ability to connect the physical and digital worlds through a single footstep places us at the forefront of the footfall energy-harvesting market,” says Kemball-Cook.
The business has teamed up with Tribal Planet, a tech business founded by former Apple executive Jeff Martin, to create a digital application that uses public venues and access points around the world to monitor the energy generated by Pavegen tiles.
The app will allow individuals to collect the power generated by their footsteps as an energy currency that can be redeemed for exclusive experiences and events access, or donated to social causes in deprived areas.
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Article first published 11 May 2016
