Comments on: England supermarket is powered by shoppers’ kinetic energy

By: Natural Energy

Natural Energy — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 16:32:00 +0000

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By: Science & Technology: Cure for Cancer, Death of Humanity, Transhumanism and More « Hope2012

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:01:53 +0000

[...] England supermarket is powered by shoppers’ kinetic energy - Daily Inquirer 6/25/09 [...]

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:15:04 +0000

Has anyone looked at the energy cost of manufacturing these things in the first place? They are probably nowhere near as efficient as claimed.
And yes, the system certainly does "steal" energy because shoppers fall a short distance and then have to climb up again. In the process the system gains some energy and the shopper loses some.
It would be insanity to install these things on roads, because the net result would be a greater consumption of fuel by vehicles to supply energy that that could be much more efficiently produced directly from a power station. No energy at all would be saved, on the contrary, a huge amount of additional energy would be wasted.

By: PasserBy

PasserBy — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 03:40:19 +0000

Humans and plant life take energy from the sun like this supermarket is taking energy generated from the gas in its customers’ vehicles. No one would call the former example a case of theft because the sun is an inanimate object and doesn’t own, in any meaningful sense, the energy that it radiates to earth. In the second case, however, the energy being taken by the supermarket unquestionably belongs to the customers. Whether or not the supermarket is comitting an act of theft when it takes the energy is down to if it has first obtained the informed consent of the customers to do it. Gven that there is NO “green” advantage to this arrangement, I can’t imagine many customers who would give that consent just in order to increase the supermarket’s profits at their expense.

By: Richard Neil Ilagan

Richard Neil Ilagan — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 03:04:47 +0000

Now, now, I wasn’t intending on sounding smug or flamebaiting with that comment – that was an honest opinion.

But hey, speaking of basic physics, you’re right with the fact that a car IS pulling against gravity. After all, every action has an equal and opposite reaction right? So, there actually IS a pull. BUT there also is a PUSH.

The thing is, I don’t think you actually *pulled* on your fingers to type in that last comment of yours. In the same manner that a car doesn’t PULL on gravity to PUSH down metal plates.

While there actually are two opposing forces at work here, pardon me when I say that you’re wrong about which one is doing the energy we’re talking about here. A car “pulls itself away” from gravity to keep its shape – when objects can’t do that enough, that’s when they get crushed by their own weight. However, the metal plates get pressed because the car is pushing on them – which is due to gravity’s pull.

By: Ron Del Rosario

Ron Del Rosario — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 01:37:35 +0000

So now we can call the Sun stupid for powering solar panels and enabling photosynthesis because it’s giving away it’s energy for free?

Or calling humans and plant life thieves for harnessing it?

Someone needs to get their logic rearranged.

By: PasserBy

PasserBy — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:11:57 +0000

I think you need a physics (and logic) refresher course – It is the other commenters who are correct and YOU are wrong. The energy being stolen is that needed to pull the car up off the pressure plate against the force of gravity. If you can’t see that simple fact then you are as stupid as you are obviously smug.

Not only is this blatant theft by the supermarket, it isn’t “green” either since its traditional power source, the National electricity grid, is far more energy efficient and less polluting than the customers’ cars.

By: England supermarket is powered by shoppers’ kinetic energy « The Invisible Opportunity: Hidden Truths Revealed

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:06:08 +0000

[...] More here [...]

By: Richard Neil Ilagan

Richard Neil Ilagan — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:53:53 +0000

Here, you just might find this next argument a little bit interesting.

Do you know why every patent office in the world does not, by principle, accept any application for a perpetual-motion machine of any kind whatsoever?

It’s basic physics. Whenever you expend energy, you actually don’t use all of it. A lot of it is actually just wasted. You throw a punch, some of the calories you burned just dissipated as body heat. You push something, some of your energy end up pushing on the air around your palms. Meaning, no motion is ever perpetual, because there is always energy wasted.

So technically, this system doesn’t steal energy – it uses energy you’ve actually (and literally) thrown away. Nobody’s going to sue you if you “steal” my garbage for example.

Besides, if you really want to be exact about it, it’s not the energy made by the car that’s being “stolen”. Actually, it’s the *weight* of the car that’s providing the energy, meaning it’s actually energy from gravity. It just so happens that the car was moving over the plates. I mean, you can drive your car anywhere you want, but if it was weightless, then the plates aren’t going to work, right?

By: Richard Legault

Richard Legault — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:08:12 +0000

RJB you wouldn’t be a lawyer per chance.

I hope you’re joking. If they could install these on highways so much the better.