They have a solar product too, but their main approach is this:
> The weight from each step across Pavegen tiles creates a small vertical movement of 5mm-10mm compressing an electromagnetic generator and creating a rotary motion to produce 2-4 joules of off-grid, clean energy.
The solar tiles make me concerned but I suppose I don’t immediately see an issue with the pressure tiles. I hope they turn out useful. Really just down to the life expectancy of the tiles.
For sure, any energy taken out of the system is coming out of your pockets. How much it taxes each individual is the question, and who profits from that energy extraction. But if we're talking a couple joules I don't really see how this is worth it. Comes across as more environmental individualism propaganda
It is already common for flooring material to yield when stepped on, for ergonomic reasons. Normally that energy all becomes heat. In principle at least, you could capture some of it as electricity without causing pedestrians to exert extra effort.
Seems useless though. Every dollar spent on this sort of fancy flooring, which is doubtlessly more expensive than carpet and/or foam rubber mats, is a dollar that isn't being spent on solar panels.
Didn't thought that. But yeah, I'm sure foot traffic would rise in if you have that outside your shop, specially for a toy store. Tiles that light up when you step on them, or that light up and you have to step on them.
2-4 joules is basically nothing. There is no chance something like this pays back the energy used to make it within its usable lifetime. It may have some use in niches where you need to power some low-power electronics away from the grid, but those also don't tend to be areas with a lot of foot traffic.
