Crystals turn roads into power stations - tech - 10 December 2008 - New Scientist

[dracodraconis]

Crystals turn roads into power stations - tech - 10 December 2008 - New Scientist

Israeli researchers propose seeding roads with peizoelectric crystals. They expect that a 1-km stretch of 4-lane highway could generate 400 kilowatts of energy. The plan to begin testing on a 100 metre stretch of highway in January.

Comments

[ancalagon-tb.livejournal.com]

Hmmm....

If this makes the highway more "bendy" to generate the electricity, then the cars will need more gas to go forward. Conservation of energy and all that...

[dracodraconis.livejournal.com]

Some of that is now being lost as waste heat. The bend per car is small, but, yes, ultimately it comes out of the fuel used to drive the car. Think of it as a small per-user tax.

[ziggy-b.livejournal.com]

There was a story on the news about using whey for salting the streets. Interesting...

(I'd look up the link for you, but my connection is really slow and I saw it on TV)

[dracodraconis.livejournal.com]

That would be this one:

Whey (Hold the Curds) For Icy Winter Streets (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9807E7DA153BF934A35752C0A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1)