Now You Can Generate Electricity While You Walk On This Floor

In the sustainable energy market, Energy Floors, a Netherlands-based firm is trying hard to make its place. They sell products like Sustainable Energy Floor and Sustainable Dance Floor, that convert footsteps into electricity. As soon as anyone steps onto the floor, the tile flexes round about 10mm  and that movement is converted into electricity-15 Watts on average, and up to 25 Watts peak. If the tiles are connected together, 40 to be precise, the network can produce up to 1 kW and this is possible due to the modular nature of these tiles.

Although we do not know how these magnificent tiles are made but for what we know is that it’s not piezoelectric. For what we can see, it looks like a rack-and-pinion that drives a small permanent magnet generator.The flow of electricity is directed by a controller module. Charging low voltage devices, charging batteries, or lighting pathways with LED's is all that can be done from the 12Voutput.

When you step on the blocks, they light up and this intrigues people to step on them again. Thus it would be an attractive marketing technique too. Solar, wind, and hydroelectric are the big players, but small energy-harvesting products have their place as well. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. 'Energy Floors could make that step more productive.'