Energy Generating Surface

Imagine a surface that when stomped or walked on generates electricity 🤯.

I personally thought that this idea was super cool so I decided to make it…

How it works:

This energy-generating surface uses a technology called piezoelectricity to generate electricity.

Piezoelectricity basically converts mechanical stress (compression, motion, etc.) into electricity through the use of piezoelectric materials. The molecular structure of a piezoelectric material is very special as it allows it to generate energy from mechanical stress.
If you want to learn more about piezoelectricity, check out this article I wrote that goes in-depth about how piezoelectricity works and its applications.

Now when someone stomps or walks on this surface, thanks to piezoelectricity, the compression and motion gets converted into electricity.

How I built it:

Here are some photos of the project before I go in-depth about how I built it:

Here is a simplified version that is easier to see:

So as you can see, we have our circular piezoelectric “disks” on the left side. A piezoelectric disk is made up of 4 components:

We have a metal plate on top, a piezoelectric material in the middle, a metal plate on the bottom, and a positive and negative wire connecting from the top and bottom metal plates.

Now when we apply compression onto that piezoelectric disk, the piezoelectric material generates electricity which is conducted (separately as negative and positive charges) through the metal plates and wires to our destination.

If we were to go back to the image we can see that we have a black box with 2 wires going into it, and 2 wires coming out of it. That black box is a rectifier. A rectifier converts an AC current (alternating current) into a DC current (direct current). The electricity a piezoelectric disk generates is AC and we want it to become DC as DC currents don't have negative charges.

rectifier

The positive and negative wires from the piezoelectric disks go through the rectifier and come out as DC current. We then connect all the positive and negative wires together creating a negative and positive master wire. Another reason we converted the current in DC is that we can connect DC currents together as we did in the image.

Now we have a negative and positive master wire which we can then connect to a multimeter to check how much electricity we are generating.

multimeter

However, the circuit in the ‘real life’ photo doesn’t quite look like the circuit in the simplified one. In the ‘real life’ one, the piezoelectric disks are arranged for maximum pressure, hence, more electricity. Another thing is that there are 2 pairs of wire, one for the foot on the left, and one for the foot on the right. Each of these feet has its own master negative and positive wire. We then connect these master wires to make a JUMBO MASTER wire. Which we can then connect to our multimeter. (the jumbo master wire is the wires you can see sticking out on the left side)

comparison

Now lest go through the process:

1. Mechanical stress from the stomping and walking is converted into (AC) electricity through the piezoelectric disks
2. The positive and negative wire from the piezoelectric disks are run through a rectifier to be converted into DC current because we can connect wires together when the current is DC
3. Since the current is now DC, we connect all the wires (for each foot) into 4 master wires (1 positive and 1 negative master wire for each foot)
4. We then connect these 4 master wires into 2 negative and positive JUMBO MASTER wires
5. These jumbo master wires are then connected to the multimeter to measure how much electricity we generated.

Demo:

Here is demo of the Piezoelectric Platform being used.

Just with a little stomp, we are able to generate 100 - 200 volts per step. This shows the insane potential for piezoelectricity.

The future…

We could put these platforms in treadmills, sidewalks, roads, shoes, and so much more. We could turn anything into an energy harvester. The applications are endless!

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Shoutout!

I would like to give a huge shoutout to Pranath and Adara for helping me with this project!

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Quick re-cap

• How it works

Using piezoelectricity. Piezoelectricity enables us to convert mechanical stress into electricity.

• How I built it

Using piezoelectric disks, rectifiers, and a lot of wires.

• Demo

I was able to generate 30 - 40 volts with a little stomp

• The future

We could use this in treadmills, sidewalks, roads, shoes, and so much more!

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