Now THAT's clever - Turbines powered by car traffic

[packman]

v

[world wide wally]

1. Perpetual motion machines?

[Aristus]

2. Well no, not technically.

They still require energy input by the motion of the air disturbed by passing vehicles. When traffic is light, energy input decreases. Still, this is ingenious.

[Jim Lane]

3. Right, it's not really a SOURCE of energy.

The passing vehicles burn gasoline or use power from batteries or whatever else propels them. Much of that energy does the work of moving the vehicle along. There's some inefficiency, however, because a lot of the energy is lost as heat or does the non-useful "work" of moving the air around.

These turbines capture some of that otherwise lost energy. The effect is a reduction (a comparatively small reduction, I'm guessing) in the inefficiency of the vehicles' use of energy sources.

[Aristus]

4. Thank you.

You said it much better than I could.

[Kaleva]

5. As energy can be neither created or destroyed, it can only be changed into one form or another

There is no SOURCE of energy. Just a transformation.

[Blue_true]

7. Exactly. nt

[Blue_true]

6. No. Wind force from passing vehicles turning a turbine.

Likely good for lighting a few street lamps, but large power generation is likely not in the equation. There is one energy generation technique that would be the Holy Grail of energy sources if it is ever perfected, that source would also make robotic inter-stellar space missions possible also.