Sainsbury’s Kinetic-Powered by Customers Cars
17 June 2009 | Green Technology | No Comments
We all know that big supermarkets in the world consume a large amount of electricity annually, and all these efforts are made for customer’s satisfaction.A very popular supermarket, Sainsbury’s from Gloucester, found a new way to generate electricity, reducing the national energy consumption.This supermarket has a large parking place for costomers but when they want to drive their cars into this area they must pass over some some kinetic road plates that surprisingly are able to produce daily 30kW of energy / hour.This electricity generation system, is expected to be installed in all major stores,supermarkets, gas stations and all big inter-urban parking places.
For an easier understanding of how this system works I will reduce all to the following idea: cars passing over this system with kinetic plates, will induce a rotation movement.That movement is then transmitted somewhere inside under this road, and is transformed in electricity.The inventor of this kinetic road is Peter Hughes, and this is what he said about his invention:”There are a lot of firms and local authorities desperate to install it. We have already had interest from a port which has five million cars pass through it every year and it would also be suitable for shopping centre car parks, filling stations and so on. It has taken several years to get it absolutely right so that it is robust and safe for cyclists and pedestrians as well as vehicles.”
“Sainsbury’s said it hoped to use the device, due to be installed yesterday in time for the store opening on Wednesday, would be rolled out to other stores following trials. It has spent £30,000 on a cycle lane at the Gloucester Quays site to promote car-free shopping but said it was inevitable that some consumers would need to use their vehicles to buy groceries. Rival chain Morrisons said it was considering installing the systems at its lorry depots where the weight of the trucks means even more power can be generated.”
Source: Telegraph
Tags: electricity generation, energy consumption, generate electricity, kinetic plates, kinetic road, kinetic road plates, kinetic sainsbury, large amount of electricity, parking place, Peter Hughes, shopping centre car parks