File this under ‘brilliant ideas’.  PaveGen – a UK Company no less – has come up with what appears to be a product of absolute genius.  Each time a person steps on a little rubber mat, their kinetic energy – the energy expended with the foot fall – is converted into electricity.  A single step is said to generate 2.1 watts … not much, but in areas of high foot traffic that could turn out to be huge.

This is just brilliant.  Apparently they’ve already installed a bunch outside a school of 1100 pupils and are scheduled to use them in some places during the Olympics.  There are case studies on the PaveGen site.

Simple ideas like this do get me excited to the point where sometimes I even feel that maybe we’re not all off to hell in a hand basket!

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