Power in Motion

Every time an underground train comes to a stop at a station it takes all of it's kinetic energy and transfers it into a lot of heat and noise in order to come to a stop. What would it take to create a simple regenerative braking system down there to harness that energy and put it back into the system?

I was thinking that if it wasn't possible to use the motors already on the trains for this then a simple generator attached to a tyre would do the trick. You could put one at every station entrance and as the train came in the tyre would push onto a plate on the underside of the train, thus causing it to rotate and generate energy in the form of electricity. This energy transfer would in turn slow the train down. If you cant picture what I mean then see the image below from the London Eye:

People Power

This might be happening already, but why don't all the gyms in the country use the human energy that is being expended on all those fittness machines to generate eletricity and feed that into the grid. Surely this woud cut down on their air conditioning bills at the least...

Fabric Power

Get this from New Scientist - fabric that can generate energy.

Think Flag Power
Sail Power
T-Shirt Power

A lot of hot water

It occurred to me this morning that Thames Water are busy digging up the whole of London and laying new water pipes for us all. Wouldn't it be an idea for them to lay a *hot* water pipe along side the existing lines. Then we could extract the heat out of the Underground during the summer, when it's roasting, and Thames water could sell that into homes or businesses as heating during the winter.....

There really is energy everywhere...

Just an idea...

Hi, I've been thinking for a while that I'd set up a website forum type thing to encourage discussion and ideas related to our use and requirement for energy. I came up with the name from a Calvin and Hobbs cartoon book, though the phrase used in that was 'There's Treasure Everywhere". However, I think this applies quite nicely to our current energy situation - we just have to take a look around us to see that there is indeed 'treasure everywhere' with regards to energy, it's just a matter of thinking a little more creatively about how we get to and use it. I'm sure many of the things I write in this will be deemed fairly unlikely or even far-fetched as means of getting energy, but then that's the whole point really - an who would have thought that some of the other energy systems we currently employ would be possible 200 years ago? I mean; splitting atoms, come on!