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The Netherlands based company, Royal Boon Edam Group Holding, has created the world's first energy generating revolving door that is currently installed at the Driebergen-Zeist railway station in Holland. The door stores power generated in a capicitor bank and illuminates LED lights in its ceiling, while a large scale display outside the building shows pedestrians how much overall power has been generated by the door. This commercialized door is not to be confused with the "Revolution Door" project which still remains a prototype.
World's First Energy Generating Revolving Door via InHabitat
Folks avoid our revolving door because it already takes more work to push. Yet another item from the endless stream of counter-productive energy harvesting ideas. Think, people!
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So the reason for revolving doors that I've heard (other than that they're cool) is that the actually save energy *for the building*.
So yeah... people feel that they're _personally_ doing more work, so it's a bad thing. As Brad chides us above, please think about whether your personal effort is helping save some (comparatively large) amount of electricity.
I'm glad to see these engineers trying to make a double-win: savings for the building's heating/cooling and electricity from the work done by the people going into and out of the building. All for the cost of a little inconvenience :-)
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Unfortunately, I think Brad may be right on this one. Unless this is the only door, or the only kind of door in a building, people will try to avoid it because they would rather not have to push so hard on it. I know it seems like people would jump at the idea to save energy, but I don't think saving energy by making it hard to get in/out of a building is the right way of doing it. People are lazy, they will always be lazy, no matter how much the planet is in crisis. We have become accustomed to our wasteful ways of doing things and old habits are extremely hard to break. This door is more of a proof of concept novelty item than something that is actually feasible on a large scale.
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To be fair, a revolving door is a lot easier than opening two separate doors, which is what would have to be set up to achieve almost similar results (since the main point of a revolving door is to keep heat within the building).
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If maintaining a temperature imbalance with the outside *weren't* a concern (eg: in California?), then a swinging door could use regenerative braking to generate electricity: it'd be just as easy to open and simply close more slowly.
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I'm going to guess that most of the people here are Americans. "We have become accustomed to our wasteful ways" is not a universal view. This revolving door is in Holland, where the majority of the population chooses to continue biking and walking over other forms of transit. People there may indeed seek out the energy-producing door...
Also, this comment submission procedure requires Javascript to be enabled, which is just silly...
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First there was the push-it-yourself revolving door. Perfect minimalistic detailed by Van de Rohe and co. Then someone thought the door should be motorized. Well, for me those motorized doors are always too slow. Now they use the motor as generator! How stupid. It will probably power some mini-candela LED's, but nothing serious. It will defenitely not carbon-neutralize the power wasted on the technology on top of the door. So less is more again: go back to the push-it-yourself doors and get the architectural detailing back to 50's 60's levels as seen in the International Style. And let me create those tornado turns again when I'm in a hurry, leaving visitors behind me dumbfounded :)
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are you people really that lazy that you don't want to push a revolving door? pretty soon your gonna want to stop walking and have a machine take you places. o wait their called segways, thats right you lazy fat fucks, get off your big fat fucking asses and do some physical activity before you get a heart attack. i mean seriously i cant walk into a walmart without seeing a morbidly obese person ride an electric wheelchair so they can pick up more cheese doodles and clog up their veins and arteries even more.
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whoever has come up with it obviously has the best of intentions, but I don't think my 97 year old granny would be too happy about having to push the door round. what about a mum with a pushchair? or a kid? in the uk this wouldn't be allowed - it would be against the law unless you got an accessible door next to it, so what's the point?
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Many of your comments are quite stupid. All they have to do is improve this door by making it lighter. Throwing out the idea just because it's heavy is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
The point with a new technology is that you first put an idea into practice. Then you listen to what people have to say and then you build a better one. Those of you who discard something just because it's not perfect should stop being so egotistical and self centered and actually try to improve the world we live in. Such negative only destroys the potential for creative ideas.
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"The door stores power generated in a capicitor bank and illuminates LED lights in its ceiling, while a large scale display outside the building shows pedestrians how much overall power has been generated by the door."
Is the large scale display electronic? If so I believe that would kind of off set the power generated by the door...
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What always gets me in articles like this, is how much they under estimate the amount of power we use every day, and how much they over estimate the amount of power produced by a casual push on a revolving door.
The upper limit on human generated power is probably a Cat 1 bicycle racer, who can probably generate 300 - 400 watts per hour: enough for a couple light bulbs, but not much else.
Considering that the door probably isn't spinning constantly, and the effort applied isn't approaching a Cat 1 sprint, the output is useless...
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There are some negatives to be sure. Getting through with a wheelchair or stroller is huge. You need a handicapped door to be available. But even with another door, people will still use the revolving door as opposed to using the other door, so they don't have to wait in line. This only works in a busy area where the door would revolve often. Which only makes sense; why install an expensive door in a low-traffic area. I think the same idea would be great but instead of a door, the gates and weird revolving "bar" doors at subway stations.
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Are people, as CO2-emitting machines, more or less efficient than other power generating mechanisms? i.e., do we emit more or less CO2 per unit of energy than, say a coal driven steam turbine?
If it turns out we are the less efficient energy producers, I've got bad news for you: This and all of the other idiotic "energy saving" devices (like hand cranked cell phone charges, ad nausium) result in larger net CO2 emissions.
If the above thought never occurred to you, I'll throw in another little nugget just to shit on your rainbow: Electric and "hydrogen powered" cars are *not* zero emission, unless your source of energy happens to be a hydroeletric damn or nuclear power plant (Which, IIRC greentards aren't exactly in love with either.) I doubt anyone's given it any thought, but considering the many miles of copper residential power is usually piped through, I wouldn't be surprised if the end result is more CO2 emissions.
--Skeptical, Iconoclastic, Freethinking American
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First, did anyone look into the door more than the blurb above? Or did everyone just skip to the comments to start arguing?
If you actually visit Boon Edam's website, they'll tell you that the train station sees 8500 commuters per day and that the projected power generated is 4600kWh. yes, that's a small amount but it is a small amount that isn't using dirty power. To address the comment about people and CO2 - just because the person doesn't produce mechanical power pushing the door doesn't prevent them from taking a breath and exhaling CO2. Good thought, but what's the incemental CO2 due to physical exertion pushing a door above walking? That's the incremental amount that is caused by pushing the door. To put the stats out, the amount of CO2 produced by kWh of electricity depends on the fuel used to produce the electricity. In the US it averages 1.33 lbs CO2 per kWh (2005 US average). The USDA estimates that a person emits 900g of CO2 per day on average during respiration, or 1.98lbs. If the door produces 4600 kWh for 17000 trips (assume 2 per commuter, worst case) then you get 0.27kWh per commuter, or enough CO2 offset to live averagely for 4.36 hours. I'd be comfortable assuming the door saves mroe CO2 per person than emitted by the extra effort to go through the door.
Second, as was said in an earlier post, there is nothing that says this door is heavier than a normal revolving door or resists movement more than a normal door. You can live an die on assumptions and get nowhere. I'm not sure why a company would try to sell a product that makes peoples lives more difficult as they would have sharply declining sales.
Third, if you look at the picture you'll see that there is a glass swing door adjacent to the revolving door - any modern building code will require it for handicap accessibility. Maybe it is only a marketing photo, but it says something that a person is using the revolving door and not the swing door...
Lastly, MIT did a study of the doors on their campus and found that a person choosing to use the revolving door instead of the swing door saves enough energy to light a 60-watt light-bulb for 23-minutes, or 0.023kWh. This is due to heating energy primarily. This is even more critical to high-rise buildings where the "stack effect" (hot air rises in layman's terms) can cause problems in lobbies. For example, the Chicago Fire Department had a unique problem on their hands when there was a fire in teh Sears Tower: the draft induced by the open swing doors in the lobby (used for fire egress) was so great that the doors on the elevators were not able to close against the wind blowing in the doors, across the lobby, and up the elevator shaft.
Debate is about coming to the table educated on the topic and providing sounds reasoning, not just blasting an idea like the crackpots on political commentary shows...
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