Why not make electricity from elevators?

Why not regenerate electricity through the elevator when it is in motion? Why can’t Global Positioning System (GPS) be used to monitor and control vehicular traffic? – these were some of the questions based on which first semester students of Vidyavardhaka College of Engineering (VVCE) in Mysore built projects at a recent expo in the college premises.

Even though the technology was not new, the students developed the models and displayed them at the Product Innovation Exhibition on its campus as part of an effort to enhance their innovative potential and entrepreneurial skills.

With the construction of high-rise structures with elevators becoming the order the day, Athrey S. Katti, Deepak Kumar and Chengappa B.C., first semester BE students at VVCE, came up with a model that produces electricity from elevators.

Elevators typically account for two to ten per cent of a building’s power consumption.

Drawing from Faraday’s law of electromagnetic induction that shows how electricity is produced when there is mutual movement between a coil and magnet, the students developed a small working model that generated 0.12 microns of electricity in two minutes, said Anjana Shashi Kiran, Director of Sapience Academy, with whom VVCE held the Product Innovation Exhibition.

Magnets are mounted on the elevator and coils placed inside the elevator shaft with two ends of the coil connected to a battery. The electricity generated when the elevator moves up and down can be used for lighting, fans and other purposes, said the students.

Sri Vishnu and his team came up with a GPS-monitored traffic control system. With rising vehicular population, causing traffic chaos in urban areas, the project envisages automated traffic rule violation detector and imposition of penalty on errant vehicles.

The detectors, which are programmed to identify violations on a particular street, can immediately impose a penalty on the errant vehicle, provided it is fitted with GPS. The students however admitted that installing GPS tracker on all vehicles would be difficult. The other projects presented by students included generation of electricity from noise, automated water-level indicator to avert floods, bullet-proof jackets, etc.

Source: The Hindu