Hanging out with celebrities, royalty and politicians is not the first place you would expect to see the engineer behind an up-and-coming renewable energy system. But that is exactly where you might find Laurence Kemball-Cook, the inventor of Pavegen – a product that generates power from footsteps.
In his short career to date, the engineer-turned-chief executive has advised the South Korean government, worked with the Duke of York, flown in David Cameron’s private jet, and partnered with hip-hop rapper Akon on a charity project.
“We have realised that the power of celebrity, government and monarchy is key to scale a new form of renewable energy,” says Kemball-Cook. “People listen to them more than they listen to me. Great technology needs to have a celebrity behind it to get the noise out. Too many British firms have amazing technology but nobody knows who they are because nobody talks about it.”
He came up with the concept of Pavegen while studying industrial design and technology at Loughborough University, where he worked 16 hours a day to develop it.
He explains: “The problem of energy in cities was becoming more prevalent in the media, so I looked to find a solution. I thought rather than a solar panel we can use a floor tile that would gather the energy from footsteps. The concept needed to be commercial, that could be used inside and out, and that would generate a tangible amount of power in an off-grid location.”
It wasn’t long before Kemball-Cook won the Royal Society of Arts’ international design competition and invested the £5,000 prize money in developing Pavegen.
The technology works by converting kinetic energy into electricity via a flywheel. As a person stands on the tile the system converts downward movement into rotational movement. The energy is stored in the inertia of the flywheel, which has electromagnetic generators embedded within it.
Best foot forward
Pavegen has a direct power system and one that stores the energy in batteries. “We eventually want to be able to feed it back into the grid,” says Kemball-Cook. “We are limited by the amount of energy from a foot. We are not saying we can power the world, but as part of the energy mix we will be a key component.”
Currently each tile can produce between 1-5J per footstep, although the company says its latest model has seen a substantial improvement in efficiency. However, the main challenge is making the tiles the same price as normal flooring. Pavegen costs 20% more per square metre than the flooring found in railway stations.
“We believe in a few years we will be able to get our product down to sub-5mm thickness, and sub-£35/m2,” he says. “We believe we can be as efficient as solar in urban spaces. We are pioneering a market.”
One of the most recent innovations that the company has introduced is the ability to transmit wireless data when a title is stepped on about how people move around cities. The ability to track people in real time is crucial, especially in shops, because it enables companies to see how consumers behave. “Nobody really has an efficient way of doing it at present – they use camera systems and lasers,” says Kemball-Cook.
The company has also created a cloud-based app that enables users to quantify what the electricity they are producing can be used for.
Already Pavegen’s technology can be seen at 150 sites in more than 30 countries. Its main markets include: large infrastructure and government projects, transport, shops, offices and education institutions.
The company’s most notable projects have included working with Arup and the Olympic Delivery Authority to power the lights in West Ham Tube station, working with Siemens in London at the Crystal building – said to be one of the most sustainable buildings in the world, partnering Schneider Electric to use the power of people on the Champs-Élysées to supply energy to schools in Paris, and working with Shell to power the floodlights on a soccer pitch in Lagos, Nigeria.
The company’s production line is in Eastern Europe and it takes 6-10 weeks to make a batch of tiles. Kemball-Cook says: “We want to manufacture a product that is able to withstand the harshest environments known to man – some floors can receive in excess of 20-40 million footsteps a year – so we have engineered them to last five years if not longer. My aim is that our tiles will outlive me – then I’ll be very happy with their performance!”
Pavegen will launch a new tile in the first quarter of 2016 that it says will be more functional and efficient. He explains: “The old tile had a top sheet which deflected 5mm. It was made out of a special composite we developed with some rubber on top – of the energy of a footstep, a percentage is lost from deflecting the top sheet. It deflected to enable the tile to be compliant with building regulations so there was no trip hazard. The new product has no trip hazard, yet it has a rigid top sheet, which means we get 100% power conversion.
“Also the edges of the old tile did not generate energy, again because of trip hazards. The whole surface of the new tile generates energy so the yield from a corridor will be higher per person. We believe each person can generate 5W of continuous power as they walk down a corridor.”
Also in early 2016 the company’s tiles will start to be used by J P Morgan in Los Angeles, in the White House after Pavegen secured contracts with the federal government, and at Nanjing University in Singapore.
Going forward, Kemball-Cook says the company will also focus on harnessing energy from other spaces: “We wish to develop a portfolio of kinetic products so are looking at roads and harnessing energy for off-grid applications. We will be pushing forward with these and building technical teams in the next 12 months.”
To this end, the company has launched a technology campus at the Future Business Centre in Cambridge and has brought in a team of scientists and engineers specialising in low-power electronics. “We are looking for the best engineers and technical sales teams to be part of the journey,” he says.
Pavegen employs 45 people and makes £5 million revenue annually, but that would not have been possible without the determination of Kemball-Cook to get his idea out of university.
Funding gap
“I asked the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills for help in developing the product, but they said forget it, it won’t work,” he says. “I went to 150 venture capitalists in London, but at the time they were not investing in early-stage businesses, so they also said forget it. Loughborough University said they would help, but they wanted me to give them most of my company.
“I realised I had to create my own luck. I broke into a building site at 2am with my product and cemented it into the ground. I took a photo and put it on my website – I said that we were celebrating our latest installation. Off the back of that I closed our first £200,000 deal because people thought it was real. Then I had the benefit of commercial traction – I was able to raise £150,000 the next week.”
Currently there are no rival companies in this area of renewable energy, “but if I had a pound for every student attempting this at university I’d be a rich man,” he says.