Kinetic energy is present in a moving vehicle, much like the energy present in a bicycle, which may sometimes continue to roll even though it’s no longer being peddled by the rider. Heavy-duty trucks have up to 25 times more kinetic energy than a typical car traveling at the same speed.
“In order to maximize the electricity generated by our MotionPower™ systems, engineers have been working to creatively increase the amount of kinetic energy captured from vehicles while minimizing payload disruption and maintaining driver safety and passenger comfort,” explained Meetesh V. Patel, president and chief executive officer of New Energy Technologies.
“As a result, several weeks ago, engineering teams developing our MotionPower™-Auto technology for cars and light trucks achieved a 25-fold increase in energy capture, and today, I’m proud to announce that engineers have now doubled the energy captured by our fluid-driven, Motion-Power™-Heavy technology for heavy trucks, buses, and long haul rigs.”
New Energy Technologies’ proprietary MotionPower-Heavy technology is a fluid-based system, uniquely capable of drawing significant amounts of energy from a single vehicle without jarring its payload or creating passenger discomfort. The efficient transfer of energy from heavy vehicles to the MotionPower-Heavy system ensures greater electricity production and adoption of the device, currently under development.
Following a series of successful small-scale prototype tests of its MotionPower-Heavy technology, New Energy Technologies recently announced plans to build a commercial-scale system for generating electricity from the motion of heavy vehicles. Since then, engineers have begun design and construction of a field-ready prototype, achieving several significant improvements. Advancements to the field prototype address numerous requirements of an unattended system, including safety and tamper-resistant mechanisms, and increased performance of the vehicle energy harvester.
Safety features of the field prototype include improved driver perception of the device, ensuring a greater degree of safety. Engineers have also reduced the vertical height of the system by 20%, an important feature for field testing which requires a non-embedded, above-road system. The slimmer profile serves to reduce the need for entry and exit transition ramps, resulting in a smoother drive over the system. The field prototype also features contiguous driving surfaces, which visually blend the system with the roadway and eliminate gaps, openings, or edges that could otherwise present safety or reliability issues.
Additionally, the new tamper-resistant design, accompanied by a suite of sensors, allows the system to operate and be tracked for extended periods of time without supervision, essential to conducting meaningful tests at field-installation sites. Field tests will help quantify the system’s response to a range of real-world operating conditions, an important precursor to further engineering and product design refinements towards commercial deployment of the MotionPower system.
Commercial-scale development of the company’s MotionPower-Heavy technology represents the next step in New Energy Technologies carefully engineered product development program and is a milestone towards commercialization of the practical vehicle energy harvester.
New Energy Technologies is a US-based developer of next generation alternative and renewable energy technologies.
