3 ms·

Shouldn't a down-hill escalator be able to generate electricity?

• lsllc 4y ago
  That was my thought too, from a mechanical design point of view, perhaps some sort of funicular design perhaps where the weight of the passengers going down helps left the other side. But maybe some sort of regenerative braking on the down side charging batteries to assist the up side.
• dmurray 4y ago
  Apparently frictional losses are too high. This seems intuitively believable: I'm imagining an escalator disconnected from its motor and wondering whether a constant flow of people (stepping on, but not walking downhill) could keep it running at 1m/sec.
• MrPatan 4y ago
  What would be the minimum number of passengers it'd need before it can go by itself?.
• thombat 4y ago
  Doing this in a non-spherical-cow environment will be challenging, because the gravitational load varies (passengers stepping on/off) but it's probably important to keep the velocity fairly constant to avoid upsetting the balance of those standing on it, let alone those walking down it. So it likely needs the generator load to be very responsive to the behavior of a long loop of rather heavy objects with quite a lot of friction, motor driven via reducing gears. Maybe instead of thinking of generation, it's more a question of regulating the applied motor power to keep constant velocity?
• jerome-jh 4y ago
  It would certainly be possible to recover some of this energy. Just like it is possible to recover some of the heat lost by people: https://www.greenchipstocks.com/articles/body-heat-from-passengers-to-train-stations-to-office-buildings/78716 https://www.greenchipstocks.com/articles/body-heat-from-pass...