New Energy Technologies MotionPower

New Energy Technologies MotionPower

Imagine how many vehicles drive through a fast food restaurant parking lot in New Jersey on Labor Day weekend. What if all of the extra kinetic energy wasted by those vehicles during deceleration could be turned into electricity? A Maryland based renewable energy company is hoping to answer that question.

New Energy Technologies, Inc. conducted durability testing of their MotionPower system last weekend at a Burger King in Hillside, NJ. The system consists of a collection of actuators resting on the pavement. As a vehicle depresses the actuators, the tire force and rolling kinetic energy are converted to turn a proprietary electrical generator. The electricity produced could potentially be used for street lighting, building lighting, electronics, appliances or as emergency power in the event of an outage. New Energy believes that harnessing the kinetic energy generated by moving vehicles on a given day in the U.S. could power more than 250,000 homes.

Additional testing of MotionPower will take place in the coming weeks at the Four Seasons in Washington DC and the Holiday Inn Express in Baltimore.

If New Energy succeeds, your fast food joint could theoretically give you french fry grease for bio-diesel in exchange for your vehicle's excess energy. Suddenly the Whopper has a conscience.

Source: Green Car CongressNew Energy Technologies, Fox News