Could automobile traffic power green data centers?
Who knew that a drive to the grocery store could help save the planet.
UK grocery chain Sainsbury’s said it is the first European company to install kinetic road plates in one of its parking lots that produce energy every time a car drives over it. The kinetic road plates are expected to produce 30 kilowatts of energy an hour. 
When a car drives over the plates in any direction, a rocking motion is created under the road surface that turn generators. The energy is captured and redirected back to the store and used as power for the checkouts and other purposes, the grocer explains. The company says the power would normally have been taken from the National Grid.
The plates have been installed at Sainsbury’s newest store in Gloucester, England, which opened in June and sports many other environmental features. The company says the store will harvest enough rainwater over the next two years to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool and will be used to flush the toilets. Solar thermal panels heat up to 100% of the store’s hot water during the summer (yes, Britain does get plenty warm on some days in the summer), while the electric lights are on automatic dimmers so less electricity is used on brighter days.
The kinetic road plates are the brainchild of British designer Peter Hughes, who formerly advised the United Nations on renewable energy. The plates have also caught the attention of some local councils which are using the plates in speed bumps on roads to power street lights, traffic lights and road signs.
The idea hasn’t won over everyone, though. David MacKay, a professor in the department of physics at the University of Cambridge writes that the emissions saved is miniscule compared to the energy used by a typical trip to the grocery store. In an article for the Guardian newspaper, MacKay writes:
“For a car weighing one tonne travelling at 20mph when it hits the road plates, the extracted energy comes to 0.002 kilowatt-hours (kWh). Now, the energy used by the car, assuming it is driven three miles to and three miles from the supermarket with a fuel efficiency of 33 miles per gallon, is about 8 kWh. The savings from parking at the green car park thus amount to one four-thousandth of the energy used by the trip to the supermarket.”
The kinetic road plates idea isn’t the first time that people-generated power is being used to provide energy. Bar Surya, a London nightclub powers its lights and air conditioning using energy created by patrons pounding on the dance floor, while gyms use energy from people working out to power lights.
Coming back to the kinetic plates, there may not be enough auto or human traffic in your company’s parking lot or data center to help make enough power to run your data center, but just imagine how much energy could be generated from the traffic at your closest freeway.
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