Coolhunt #27: New Energy

New Energy

It's a fact that many of our energy sources are coming to their end. So we need new ways to get our energy. Many things have been invented yet. We can already use energy from natural forces like the sun, the water and the wind. Improvements have been made already and now we are looking for new kinds of energy. Can we get energy from electromagnetic fields? By moving our own body? By using all kinds of new technologies? I've found some coolhunts that will show these improvements. Take a look!

The Electromagnetic Harvester is an example of a new kind of energy. The Electromagnetic Harvester, invented and designed by Dennis Siegel, is a small device which you can use to charge an AA-battery. With energy, you ask? Ofcourse not! It uses the omnipresence of electromagnetics fields around us, like electromagnetic fields from our microwaves, cell phones and all other technological machines. It is able to tap into several electromagnetic fields to exploit them by holding the harvester directly into the electromagnetic fields. The harvester’s strength is indicated by a LED on the top of the object. The closer you’re holding it to the electromagnetic source, the faster it charges the battery. So you get your energy from all the electromagnetics fields around us! These days there are so many electromagnetic fields around us, just being there, useless. Why not use them for charging smartphones or something bigger? The Electromagnetic Harvester proofs us that it actually is possible to use all electromagnetic fields around us and to turn it into energy. Everybody could use it, anytime anywhere.


Electric cars are popular nowadays, so wouldn't it be nice to charge your electric car while you're driving? In the Netherlands they are developing an Electric Highway. The accu of an electric car runs out of battery very fast. You can only drive around 100 kilometres with it, than it has to be charged again. So charging your accu while you're driving would make a better chance. The Technical University of Delft is developing this technique. They want to put magnetic coils underneath the asphalt of the highway. They generate an electromagnetic field and the energy of these fields can be 'trasnported' to the car's transformer. So this energy is generated by the movement of the car itself. A highway is a perfect place for realizing this concept, because here you can drive hard and you can cover a long distance. They are now testing the concept and most of the time, it turns out great.

I already told you about getting energy from the son, also known as solar energy. People have tried to improve this energy for many years and nowadays they got things like tiny sonar panels and sonar panels which can be put onto clothes. This coolhunt is about a plug point working on solar energy, called the Window Socket. It's a very simple concept when you're talking about solar energy, so it's surprising that no one really thought about this before. This is how it works: it's just a plug point you can stick onto a window and by using solar energy, it charges anything you want. You can use it everywhere, in your home, when you're traveling by train and when you're driving in your car. No energy is needed, the sun will work. It's so handy, because you can take it anywhere and whenever the sun is shining, you can charge any electrical machine you've got. It's still a concept though, but I think this will be great in our future. Getting ALL YOUR ENERGY from the sun, that's just amazing! In the future, we could build houses without plug points and just buy a lot of Window Sockets, you we can get all our energy from the sun. Ofcourse, if we think about this idea, we need to improve the Window Socket so it can give us a lot of energy, even when it isn't very sunny, but I think it's possible.

Why it's cool:
It not only looks cool, but the thought of getting free energy everywhere you are, sounds very luxurious as well. You need to charge your battery? Just use the sun or some electromagnetic fields to charge it. But it's not only handy, yes, this is good for our environment as well (that's what Sustainability is all about, right?). Our energy sources we use nowadays are coming to their end and we need to find new sources. We've found them and now we're developing a lot of concepts by which we can use this energy. In the future, we really need these new kinds of energy, because our 'old sources' won't be there anymore. These improvements might save our lives someday, you never know.

(Sources: Link & Link & Link & Link & Link)

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