BOULDER, Colo. — Imagine a future where simply driving along a highway or even walking down a sidewalk could produce electricity to power street lights or traffic signals.
That future is now for researchers at the Flatirons campus of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Boulder.
Inside one of the labs there, engineers have built a new kind of clean energy generator. It's a centimeter-sized electric generator that, when weaved together with others like it, makes an ultra-flexible power generating material.
How does it work? Think static electricity.
"It's just like static potential energy, so the same way that when you get shocked by something from static," said NREL researcher James Niffenegger.
But in this case, that static electricity is captured and used.
"It's inherently flexible," said Niffenegger of the material. "We refer to it as a hexagonal distributed embedded energy converter."
In the ocean, the material could harness the constant motion of the waves.
"You could turn these into a tube for instance, and use it to replace mooring lines, which are lines that connect anchors to boats or buoys," Niffenegger said. "You can use it to replace nets."
In pavement, it could generate power with every passing car or every step.
"As you step on these, they can stretch and generate electricity," he said. "You could pretty much replace this with anything that ... is typically like a flexible structure that gets moved around a lot."
For example, a flag or maybe someday our clothes.
"We can use this to harvest electricity just from people moving about their every day lives," Niffenegger said. "The possibilities are endless."
It's a way to harness potential energy that has limitless potential and could truly revolutionize how we power our world.
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