“People Powered” Checkouts
Sainsbury’s have opened a new, green store in Gloucester, and one of the most revolutionary ideas they’ve come up with is what they call ‘people powered’ energy.
They’ve placed ‘kinetic road plates’ in their car park, which produce and capture energy every time someone drives over them. These are expected to produce 30kW of green energy per hour - more than enough to power the store’s checkouts. Driving over the plates won’t affect the car or fuel efficiency, and drivers won’t even feel a disturbance.
So how does it work? Well….
- As vehicles drive over the plates in the surface of the road in the car park, the plates are pushed down by the weight of the vehicle
- This then creates rocking motions under the road surface that turn generators
- These generators create energy, which is captured and redirected back to the store to be used as power.
Very clever! For more information on how Sainsbury’s new store is ‘greener’ than others, please click here.
I congratulate Sainsbury’s on their efforts to integrate innovative new energy solutions to their stores though in this case I tend to agree with David MacKay from the University of Cambridge in his recent article for The Guardian.
Thanks for your comments Kate - it’s great to have different viewpoints on the things we mention on our blog, so thank you very much for linking us through to this interesting article!