Holland Puts a New Spin on Old Technology to Combat Climate Change
A cafe in the Dutch town of Zeist has installed a revolving door which generates electricity as you pass through.
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Well, it would seem that this forward thinking country is ahead of the game once again. A new restaurant situated at the train station in the town of Zeist has been working with the design company Rau in order to reduce their carbon footprint. They’ve come up with an innovative idea in the form of a power generation system fuelled by their own customers - They have installed a generator in their revolving door which converts the energy of people passing through into electricity. Each time you pass through the door you generate enough power to make a cup of coffee. The owners estimate that the door will generate approximately 4600 KWH per year. They are also investing in other ways to reduce their energy requirements such as a special low energy cooling system, a sun collector, and of course the obligatory Dutch windmill.
As a low lying country, the Netherlands is potentially one of the countries to be most affected by sea level rise. As usual they are leading the way in developing ingenious means to reduce their need for fossil fuels. Imagine how much power we could produce if every revolving door or turnstile was equipped with this kind of energy capture technology? One small cafe in Holland may not produce much of an impact on its own, but just think how much power could be generated by such a system in a busy subway station in London or New York?
Image credit: Frank Za’atar at Flickr under a Creative Commons license
Hands up! I have no idea what the calculation might be to verify how much electricity this might generate, but I doubt that it would be very much. However, this is an innovative idea (believe me, the Dutch are very innovative), and it suggests all sorts of ways that we could easily harness energy that is otherwise wasted. For example, some of us produce an awful lot of hot air on these forums
Seriously, we should be picking up on this idea and looking for other ways to replicate it and improve upon it.
Eric,
If I understand your point correctly, you feel that an initiative like this one is irrelevant and that what really matters is just mega wind turbine projects producing mega giga watts. I think that besides the fact that every little bit helps, more importantly it makes people aware. By dismissing small projects like this one you implicitly say to all individuals out there who are trying to make small changes in their lives: “Just don’t bother!”
The world is awash with energy, but much of it is wasted, and very little is harnessed. Clever initiatives like this help to demonstrate that everything is possible, and that by applying a little ingenuity we can slowly, step by step find smarter ways to power our world.
Those who dismiss such innovation are the same that said the world is flat, man will never walk on the moon, mobile phones will never take off etc etc. And those people look pretty silly now..
Umm the revolving door is a kids project. My sister did it for her 6th grade science fair some 18 years ago and in the meantime i made a unique type of windmill for that same fair and i was in 4th grade. its funny that 18 years on now they’re implementing this same simple system in a cafe and calling it the answer to global warming?! Its a drop in the ocean, but still something is better than nothing, its cute. Damn, we should’ve patented this thing ages back i suppose..
@Anna,
Yes, it creaties awarness. But i have to say that we have so many projects in our country to create awareness. That worked alraedy. Dutch people are very concerned about climate. Over 85 percent of the people want to do something.
And ther it stops. We are not realizing big projects. We are trying out all options, all possibilities and then? Nothing.
May be you didn’t know but renewable energy is only a fraction of our electricity use. The graphic shows it all:
http://www.stichtingmilieunet.nl/andersbekekenblog/?p=2546
@Mark
I don’t dismiss this initiative, but it is really ridiculous to think this is a way to go in the world.
@Sameer
Yes, the revolving door is a kids prokect, good education.
@all
I’m looking for some correct figures about the revolving door, but believe me, it will be genetrate less energy then you think.
May be you like those kind of awareness projects. We have a bunch of them. This one is also very educative, but doesn’t generate that much energy. So it isn’t an option to go dancing everywhere in the world on this energy generating dancefloor. Yep, human powerd again:
http://www.stichtingmilieunet.nl/andersbekekenblog/?p=3304
By the way: Amy Winehouse didn’t show up at the opening.
It takes about 20KCal to boil a cup of coffee (raise 250ml of water by 80 degrees Celsius from 20 to 100). I doubt if pushing a revolving door will generate 2KCal.
Uh, Ben…?
“Energy needed = mass * temp raise * specific heat capacity = ~0.25kg * ~70C * 4.187 kJ/kgK = ~73kj
If it takes you a generous 10s to walk though the door you would need to be producing 73kj/10secs = 7.3kWatts!!!”
I’m pretty sure that making 12 cups of coffee doesn’t require 87.6 kilowatts, when a Honda fuel cell produces only 80kW and an average US home only uses 0.9-2.0kW an hour. I think you might want to look into how electricity works.
Haha, millions of bicycles? I agree there are a lot, but with Amsterdam’s population being in the 750k range, I think you’re exaggerating.
Eric,
I don’t believe such a thing like too much awareness exists. Maybe this is the one project for a couple of thousand people that say: “hey we can make a change, it does not just take huge investments and grand projects”.
Moreover, the fact that we are discussing this initiative on a US based website with a large international audience, proves that even if you are of the opinion that it is not necesary to raise awareness in Holland anymore, the news travels far beyond its borders. Or is their no necessity for awareness anywhere in the world?
And her is a nice human powered floor:
JR East will begin its experiment on December 10 and continue it until February 2009. The power-generating floor will cover an area of 25m squared and will be installed at 7 ticket gates and 7 staircase steps inside the gate.
The company expects the floors to produce 1,400 kW/sec each day. If the piezoelectric experiment is successful, the train station floors will ultimately be used to power ticket gates and electronic display systems.
http://cleantechnica.com/2008/12/04/tokyo-train-station-testing-power-generating-floor/