Energy Harvesting Platform

Electricity has become a basic necessity of life in today’s world, and therefore, is in need of efficient and innovative ways to be produced. Several of the natural resources available are nonrenewable, requiring us to resort to other methods that provide constant energy which may harm the environtment, become heavily unreliable during natural disasters or under-developed areas and may be restricted by whats available to the area.

Using technology that converts mechanical energy to electrical energy, we can create and store that energy to use as a power source. The most effective way to apply this theory is to design a platform that people would walk over. It would use the pressure applied from the feet combined with the piezoelectric effect to create a voltage that can be used for several purposes such as charging a phone, lighting up street lamps or street signs, providing electricity for low power consumption devices, for entertainment purposes such as lighting up dance floors, or simply as a backup or emergency power supply.

The tile platform design would be implemented as a sidewalk or pathway that could be placed in areas with high amounts of foot traffic such as amusement parks, shopping malls, zoos, and universities allowing for the platform to light up when pressure is applied and for a charging station to be implemented.    In addition to the electromechanical system, our design incorporates the method of harvesting solar energy through solar panels as the platform. As a second source of producing energy, this method makes the design more efficient and result in the platform being a reliable source of power for the applicable uses mentioned before.