Previously, we’ve looked at technology to generate electricity from roads embedded with piezoelectric crystals that produce electricity when squeezed. Now a group of researchers is looking to shift the technology from the road to the vehicles themselves and use piezoelectrics placed on the vehicles to convert their kinetic energy into electricity.

About a half-inch by one inch, these piezoelectric devices might be mounted on the roof or tail of a car or on an airplane fuselage where they would vibrate inside a flow, producing an output voltage. Although the power generated would not be enough to replace that supplied by the combustion engines, it could be enough to run some systems, such as batteries that would be used to charge control panels and other small electronic devices such as mobile phones.

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Tags: batteries, harvesting energy, harvesting energy from, piezoelectric, piezoelectric crystals, piezoelectric devices, piezoelectrics

This entry was posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Innovation, Project Energy, gizmag. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.