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Inspiration

We know that the world is still dependent mostly on non-renewable sources of energy with 45% of the energy coming from coal and 25% from natural gas. These sources though are easily available and are cheap, they cause pollution. Also, according to research, we will run out of these sources in the next 50 years.

What it does

Recently we have turned to many renewable sources like solar panels, windmills, and hydroelectricity to use them as a cleaner and environmentally friendly energy source. These sources are environment-friendly but are costly to set up. Thus, it is extremely important to act against this issue by using cheaper alternatives. We are solving the problem of energy crunch by harnessing the energy of vehicles using piezoelectric materials on roads which are cheap and easily available.

How I built it

We are placing circular ceramic piezo-sensors below the road, rumble strips and speed breakers so that the entire mechanical stress of the vehicle directly acts on the sensor which will, in turn, generate the energy and hence can be stored. In short, we are utilising waste transport energy. Our future avenues include putting this concept to harness the waste energy in railways and also to put these materials inside the tyre of a car to generate and harvest the energy that is wasted as of now.

Challenges I ran into

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We have devised a concept to harvest the waste energy in our day to day life by using the concept of piezoelectricity to harness waste mechanical energy of the city traffic through speed breakers and rumble strips. Using piezoelectric transducer, we have created the most efficient design to date such that the efficiency of the product is maximum. When the piezo sensor experiences a load it changes its shape and converts the mechanical energy to electrical energy in the form of an electric signal. Then the energy of this electrical signal eventually gets stored in the nearest battery in the electricity grid. As the output of the piezoelectric sensor is an AC type of electric signal, thus it is very easy to transport it to longer distances without much loss of energy. This energy can be used for purposes like lighting street lights. The proposed method is inspired from existing researches and a few new modifications have been incorporated, based on our experimental calculations to yield the best possible results and to make the electricity production with the help of roads, speed breakers and rumble strips more and more efficient and relevant for their practical implementation in the present era.

What I learned

What's next