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
I should have mentioned that the article got the energy calculation part wrong: the door *saves* 4600kWh per year. Regarding the energy that is generated from the door:
“The revolving door is equipped with a special generator that is driven by the human energy applied to the door whilst the generator controls the rotating speed of the door and makes it safer. The ceiling of the revolving door is made of safety class and gives a clear view of the technology. A set of super capacitors stores the generated energy as a buffer and provides a consistent supply for the low energy LED lights in the ceiling. In case the LED lights have used-up all the stored energy, the highly efficient control unit will switch to the alternative mains supply of the building. This ensures that the door is illuminated at all times, even when the passenger flow is minimal.”
You can see the entire press release about the door by going here: http://www.boonedam.us/inc/press/pressdetail.asp?PressId=182.
They didn’t read the press release right ( http://www.boonedam.us/inc/press/pressdetail.asp?PressId=182 )
The door gives a *saving* of 4600kWH/year compared to sliding doors. The saving comes from keeping the heat in! Not from the generator, which almost works up enough power to light some LEDs.
Interesting idea and presumably it is not so hard to get through that old people and disabled people have trouble operating it (though it can hardly be accessible for wheelchairs).
I just wonder how much heat energy is lost by having a revolving door?
This article says more about this website than about the article. The figures mentioned in this article are away from plausibility by several orders of magnitude. Even a first-grader who is able to operate a calculator will notice this nonsense.
Of course, it is possible *some* energy this way. But the generator built into the door has a CO2 footprint that the door will never make up.
You guys at ‘ecoworldly’: that’s exactly the way of environmental activities we *don’t* need. Better go and hug a tree, leave the writing to people who think
ADD kids revolving door energy crisis solved