Supermarket Powers Checkout With Customer Vehicles
A supermarket in Gloucester, U.K. has come up with a novel approach to saving energy by harnessing energy from passing vehicles to power the store’s checkouts.
The store has installed kinetic road plates in the store’s parking lot. Whenever a vehicle drives over these plates, they are pushed down by the vehicles weight. This causes rocking motions under the road surface that turn generators. The generators create energy which is then captured and sent directly to the store.
The kinetic road plates are expected to produce 30kw of energy per hour, enough to power the store’s checkouts.
Alison Austin, Sainsbury’s environment manager, says: “This is revolutionary, not only are we the first to use such cutting-edge technology with our shoppers, but customers can now play a very active role in helping to make their local shop greener, without extra effort or cost. We want to continue offering great value but we also want to make the weekly shop sustainable. Using amazing technology like this helps us reduce our use of carbon and makes Sainsbury’s a leading energy-efficient business.”
The new “green” store will also harvest rainwater, utilize solar panels to heat water and use sun pipes in the roof to bring in natural light and save energy.
Just think how a city like New York could benefit from this technology. They could install kinetic road plates at toll booths, parking garages and sports stadiums. The energy generated could be sold to the electric & utility companies.
Maybe President Obama should direct his “green energy team” to explore green techologies being developed outside the United States - or are they too arrogant!
source: www.bsdlive.co.uk
