Solar roadways wont work but.....

[HeatingGeek]

Hi everyone, Im new here and don't really have much knowledge on electronics (I also cant spell for shit so excuse me).
If solar roadways wont work has anyone ever thought of looking at generating power from pressure? So the weight of a car, moving over a surface generating power.
Now I know newtons law of equal and opposite (or whatever), and power in power out. But what if the road way surface was rubber and the car tyres were metal.. you get the comfort and the roadway uses the comfort it gives you to generate power?

I have no idea if this is possible but I bet you guys would know.

By the way I repair Gas Boilers and appliances for a living NOT electronics. I just thought I would share a thought.

Be gentle ;-)

[HeatingGeek]

So the point of the roadway being rubber is to compress and move the losses of a car tire into the production of energy.

[BrainyCapacitance]

hey, might work!

[EDIT] although, the solution in the picture might not be the best choice.

[ataradov]

But what if the road way surface was rubber and the car tyres were metal..

What do you do if you need to go off road or drive on a gravel road or even on the concrete floor of the garage?

And generally, anything that can generate energy from cars moving, takes that energy from the gas or battery in the car. So, all you are doing is distributed and inefficient conversion.

This is the same reason why putting wind turbines along the roadway to drive them from the wind generated by the cars is a bad idea.

This style of energy generation was tried for humans walking - they installed plates that would give slightly when stepped on and that would activate piezoelectric transducer. The result - this surface is really hard to walk on, since it become "mushy". It is like walking on the sand, it takes more energy.

[CatalinaWOW]

The best way to understand this is to think of rolling a ball on a hardwood floor vs a plush carpeted floor.  The ball rolls farther and easier on the hardwood floor.  The carpet is taking energy out of the ball.  In principal the carpet could recover some of this energy for use elsewhere, but you can never get more than was taken from the ball.  And in the real world there are losses so you get even less.

One thing about a world with literally billions of smart people looking for solutions to problems is that any simple idea you have for something that is not in use very probably doesn't work.  If it did it would be in use already.

[ArdWar]

This is in essence no different than the always cropping up ideas of "why don't we use wheel rotation to turn a generator"

[Andy Chee]

Generating negawatts/negajoules* is more efficient than kinetic energy recovery from road surface.

*that's not a typo.  "N" for Netherlands.  Negawatts & negajoules is energy that is not used in the first place.  It's pretty much an accounting trick.

https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/energy-efficiency/whats-a-negawatt/#gref

[JustMeHere]

Seems like someone just did a video on this:

[pcprogrammer]

Seems like someone just did a video on this:

And a thread https://www.eevblog.com/forum/dodgy-technology/rouute-road-based-energy/

[pcprogrammer]

Generating negawatts/negajoules* is more efficient than kinetic energy recovery from road surface.

*that's not a typo.  "N" for Netherlands.  Negawatts & negajoules is energy that is not used in the first place.  It's pretty much an accounting trick.

https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/energy-efficiency/whats-a-negawatt/#gref

Some will start to whine about the term has a discriminating feeling.   

But the linked site provides no solutions on how to reduce on wasting energy other than using more efficient appliances. More sensible would be to teach people to turn of the lights and computers when they leave or turn of your internet modem when you go to sleep, etc.

[Simon]

TLDR: NO!

[pcprogrammer]

One thing about a world with literally billions of smart people looking for solutions to problems is that any simple idea you have for something that is not in use very probably doesn't work.  If it did it would be in use already.

I think you are overestimating the average human intelligence. Only about 20% of the population will be smart enough so ~160 million people at best to come up with something innovative. But for the real solutions only a 10th of that are actually capable enough.

[Jeroen3]

People are trying this in pavements. Pavegen.
A pavement that produces so much energy they're fine using Watt/Second notation (joule).

[CatalinaWOW]

One thing about a world with literally billions of smart people looking for solutions to problems is that any simple idea you have for something that is not in use very probably doesn't work.  If it did it would be in use already.

I think you are overestimating the average human intelligence. Only about 20% of the population will be smart enough so ~160 million people at best to come up with something innovative. But for the real solutions only a 10th of that are actually capable enough.

You have validated your own statement without refuting mine.  Using your fractions and the actual population of the earth, 20% of 8 billion is 1.6 billion and a tenth of that is 160 million smart innovative people.  And remember the old adage that even a blind pig finds an acorn from time to time so those other 7.4 billion will come up with ideas once in a while.  Even one in a billion gives several ideas a year.

Really good ideas that not only don't fail on basic physics, but solve a problem that people care about, don't have objectionable side effects and cost low enough that people are willing to invest together the solution are extremely rare.  The OPs fails two or more of these criteria.  When someone has a new idea, some of the first items of business should be to think about why this hasn't already been implemented.  To his credit the OP has started this process with his post.

[pcprogrammer]

You have validated your own statement without refuting mine.  Using your fractions and the actual population of the earth, 20% of 8 billion is 1.6 billion and a tenth of that is 160 million smart innovative people.  And remember the old adage that even a blind pig finds an acorn from time to time so those other 7.4 billion will come up with ideas once in a while.  Even one in a billion gives several ideas a year.

I bow in shame, can't even do math anymore. 

[langwadt]

One thing about a world with literally billions of smart people looking for solutions to problems is that any simple idea you have for something that is not in use very probably doesn't work.  If it did it would be in use already.

I think you are overestimating the average human intelligence. Only about 20% of the population will be smart enough so ~160 million people at best to come up with something innovative. But for the real solutions only a 10th of that are actually capable enough.

You have validated your own statement without refuting mine.  Using your fractions and the actual population of the earth, 20% of 8 billion is 1.6 billion and a tenth of that is 160 million smart innovative people.  And remember the old adage that even a blind pig finds an acorn from time to time so those other 7.4 billion will come up with ideas once in a while.  Even one in a billion gives several ideas a year.

Really good ideas that not only don't fail on basic physics, but solve a problem that people care about, don't have objectionable side effects and cost low enough that people are willing to invest together the solution are extremely rare.  The OPs fails two or more of these criteria.  When someone has a new idea, some of the first items of business should be to think about why this hasn't already been implemented.  To his credit the OP has started this process with his post.

how many of the 160M is effectively disqualified because they or their environment doesn't have the resources to implement such ideas?

[golden_labels]

The concept itself is not like putting wind turbines on cars or energy-harvesting speed bumps. In normal tires the energy is lost as heat, so there is indeed potentially usable energy. Pressure changes, which occur during normal operation and are not intentionally induced for energy harvesting, are energy lost.

The mistake in thinking is elsewhere. We are doing everything to limit these losses. From reducing losses between the tire and the road, through lowering losses in the tire itself, to increasing road resistance to degradation: all is being done to make the energy, which OP is trying to use, close to zero. With this in mind, even if such technology was feasible and could provide reasonable amounts of energy, it has no future.

Of course we may try to not minimize these losses and keep them high, but that has two problems. First: it’s putting a hidden tax on vehicles. Because, in the end, it’s the vehicle owner, who delivers this energy. Second: it draws energy from a very inefficient source. The same amount of fuel or electricity may be turned into work much mor efficiently elsewhere.

[pcprogrammer]

You have validated your own statement without refuting mine.  Using your fractions and the actual population of the earth, 20% of 8 billion is 1.6 billion and a tenth of that is 160 million smart innovative people.  And remember the old adage that even a blind pig finds an acorn from time to time so those other 7.4 billion will come up with ideas once in a while.  Even one in a billion gives several ideas a year.

I bow in shame, can't even do math anymore. 

But on hind side yours is a bit off too. 1.6 + 7.4 adds up to 9. Fastest population growth ever. 

[golden_labels]

One thing about a world with literally billions of smart people looking for solutions to problems is that any simple idea you have for something that is not in use very probably doesn't work.  If it did it would be in use already.

This is a common mistake in using probabilistics for arguments.

This probability is the same for everybody. If we accept the policy of not announcing an idea, because it’s almost certain somebody else tried it, there is a problem. There must be a person, who is the first person with the idea. But for them this probability is also the same. Therefore — by policy — they should not reveal the idea. And the same applies to everybody after them. Which leads to a situation, where the idea is never announced. Which contradicts the initial condition of this probability being non-zero.

Other than leading to this conflict, this way of interpreting the probability leads to more serious trouble. The more people involved in an event, the more likely is that each of them will assume somebody else already took some required action. But since everybody assumes this, in the end the chances of anybody taking action gets close to zero.

The right interpretation is different. The high chance of somebody else already announcing the idea (or making a software bug report, or calling for help, …) should rather lead to verification. For example by searching for similar ideas being already proposed (or bugs reported, or help called for, …). Which is exactly what OP did above: seeked opinions of others. There is absolutely no reason to shame them or otherwise give neegative feedback on the behavior itself.

Pedants disclaimer: I’m aware this probability is a function of time (hence not identical to everybody), that the set of people with the idea is not strictly speaking a totally ordered set, that I mix “got idea” and “announced idea” for clearer description, and that this is better described as a case of failing to update the model after changing policies.

[TimFox]

People are trying this in pavements. Pavegen.
A pavement that produces so much energy they're fine using Watt/Second notation (joule).

1 Watt = 1 Joule/sec

[CatalinaWOW]

The probability I speak of is not a formal probability,  more just a statement of unlikeliness.

And I apologize for my snarky math comment followed by my own flub.

What I would really suggest is focusing on the last paragraph.  It basically says that when you have an idea which you think is clever, the first thing you should do is to look into whether it really is a new idea, and think through whether it has fatal flaws upon implementation.

I'll post an example of my own.  Fresh water is a rare and viable commodity in many oceanside communities.  Fresh water can be produced by forcing seawater through a reverse osmosis membrane.  But this requires pumps which are expensive to build and operate.  Freshwater is less dense than seawater, so this pressure could be generated for "free" by putting the RO filter at the end of a long pipe into the deep ocean.  I'll leave why this is not a viable idea to you all, but it isn't.