Engineering news
Pavegen, a British technology start-up, has launched a crowdfunding campaign to push forward the development of its floor tiles that generate energy to power lights and buildings by harnessing the kinetic energy of pedestrians.
The Crowdcube campaign aims to raise at least £750,000, which Laurence Kemball-Cook, founder and CEO of Pavegen, said will help the firm to scale the product. This will be achieved by developing its tooling to mass manufacture the tiles and test and research a number of recycled materials to bring costs in line with conventional flooring - the price currently stands at around £300 per unit. The goal, he said, is to ensure the technology can provide “on-demand energy generation, real time data analytics and M2M control”.
Kemball-Cook said: “We see this as the right opportunity to enable our next stage of growth for Pavegen.
“As we continue to expand globally and create value for our current shareholders, we will be looking to close a larger venture capital round in the near future. Crowdfunding has enabled us to reach this next stage of growth far quicker than conventional forms of raising finance.”
The Pavgen tile technology works using a combination of electromagnetic induction and flywheel energy storage technology, whereby it generates watts of energy per footstep. Currently the system averages 7W per pedestrian, with a 20m array having the potential to produce around 1,500W. A wireless system called the Application Programming Interface (API) allows the Pavegen units to collect, monitor and communicate real-time data. This can be used for footfall analytics, data visualisations, or social media.
Unsurprisingly, the product is best suited to high-footfall areas with a large and constant flow of pedestrians. The largest deployment of tiles so far has been at a (non-standard sized) football pitch in a Favela in Rio de Janeiro to help power the floodlights around the pitch. Other installations include in Federation Square in Melbourne, Australia, and at London’s Heathrow airport.
Kemball-Cook said that following the crowdfunding campaign the main area of focus will now be to improve its current system and replace the “power hungry PC with a compact, low energy, secure wireless gateway and power management system.” A new platform of cloud-based analytics, will help provide a new range of insights, information and services to its customers.
Beyond the Pavegen tile, Kemball-Cook said the firm aims to repackage its IP into “a suite of kinetic energy harvesting products” to create a system “ready for the interoperability of cities of the future”.
Kemball-Cook added: “By refining our API for M2M interaction and developing the technology for surfaces such as stairways and roads, we intend to ensure that Pavegen remains at the forefront of the footfall energy harvesting sector.”