With so many electronic gadgets in the world today it seems like we are constantly charging them. There is technology being developed though that would tap into the energy of people’s movements. This could be used to power mobile device and possible an entire structure. The power derived from people is a green energy that could be using for charging up any and all electronic gadgets in place of traditional electricity that causes a carbon footprint.

Facility: Innovate is an architectural research company in London. It is working on making an energy collector in areas that draw a lot of people such as shopping malls, sport complexes and other buildings that have large events. This technology will not be noticeable though to the naked eye. However, their movement on the tiles will activate a pneumatic machine which then pushed air along to a turbine where is creates electricity according to Oliver Schneider, the managing director. Only a slight difference will be felt by people similar to being on a floor mat.

Oliver says,  “We’re looking to generate around 1kilowatt-hour of electricity (from each device) per day. That’s enough to charge around 300 phones per day”. This power will then be transferred to stations for the purpose of charging phones, or to be used for electronic signs and lighting too. Since this technology makes direct current, powering the local DC gadgets is a more effective use of it than converting it to AC to feed through the grid.

This company is preparing to install this type of mechanism for the first time in the USA later on in 2010 and somewhere in the UK quickly to follow. Even the ticket areas in the stadiums could do this, any spot where people congregate into a group.

This version of collecting movement energy can be placed under traditional flooring material, unlike the slabs for generating energy that the Pavegen Systems, another London company, devised. It means this version is much more versatile and can be used other places.

Now Zhong Lin Wang in Atlanta at Georgia Tech wants to use people’s footsteps make electricity without having to do special flooring to accomplish this. He wants to develop special shoe pads and similar devices that can collect energy using the pressure from the feet of the person wearing them, in the near future. These will utilize piezoelectric nanowire generators; these actually generate alternating current when handled correctly. Wang last month reported results of a mechanism around 5 centimeters wide which when it was flexed generated 1.3 volts, this is enough for an AA battery to get charged.

Over in Berkeley, Chieh Chang and his colleagues at University of California have come up with a process for printing the nanowires which similarly generate energy. These are created through electrospinning process. This takes a solution that is charged and processes it though a needle which is electrically charged and sends it to a grounded surface. This print method for nanogenerators could even be used with clothing and other textiles to charge up electronic devices for the person wearing them.

This is definitely a promising idea for energy savings. Anything we can do to lower the drain of resources in the world will help lessen our carbon footprint.