UK energy and data harvesting firm Pavegen has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Siemens to bring its technology to smart city projects around the world.
Pavegen produces an interactive flooring technology, which converts the kinetic energy of footfall into off-grid electricity and data, and has previously worked with big names such as Shell to create the world’s first kinetic and solar powered football pitches in Rio and Lagos.
Pavegen has also built permanent installations at transport hubs such as Heathrow.
Working together, Pavegen and Siemens will initially target airport infrastructure, mixed use developments, hospitals, looking to integrate Pavegen technology into local distributed energy grids.
Laurence Kemball-Cook, founder and CEO, Pavegen says: ‘Pavegen is all about putting people at the heart of smart city infrastructure. Siemens has the skills, resources and network to help us deploy at scale in key locations such as transport hubs and new build developments.”
Jenny Bofinger-Schuster, senior vice president sustainability and cities says: ‘This is an exciting opportunity to combine Siemens’ engineering and project management skills with Pavegen’s innovative technology which connects people directly to energy generation and data collection.’
How the technology works:
‘The Pavegen surface consists of a series of interlocking triangles. As people walk across the patented system, the top surface moves vertically by between 5mm and 10mm. This downward force creates a rotation in the electro-magnetic generators below, which produces around 5 watts of continuous off-grid power for the duration of the footstep. The system also incorporates Low Power Bluetooth beacons which can reward users for their steps via apps.’
