Golden 1 Center Installed An Electricity-Generating Footpath [VIDEO]

A company installed a temporary power-generating footpath outside the Golden 1 Center over the weekend, demonstrating its potential use.

By nowproducerdave on September 24, 2018
(Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

This is pretty cool tech, demonstration or otherwise. It’s literally a footpath that sort of has a “squishy” feel to it. When people walk across it, it generates electricity. It’s small-scale, but the tech is improving, and one day it could be a serious source of extra power.

So it’s alternative energy, but that’s still cool. The company that created the walkway is called Pavegen. It generates power, yes, but not quite enough that would power a home, of course. But really, it can light up LED lighting, and if the power is stored throughout the course of a day, it can light up a public area at night. That’s assuming there’s a large enough area and foot traffic in that area, too. As technology improves, the floor will generate more power, and more energy can be stored to be reused. They say that an average “10,000 steps a day” can power a phone for about 16 hours. Imagine if this tech was inside shoes – your phone would never die!

Now for the installation at Golden 1 Center. It was there over the weekend, outside the front doors to the arena. In less than 48 hours, the path had about 50,000 footsteps across it. That might not seem like much for a pedestrian area, but imagine if it was in a much more heavily foot-traveled area, like Old Sac, or somewhere like that. The temporary installation was installed to demonstrate the tech, and to get people talking about it. The power generated could light up bike trails, walking areas, and common areas like parks and gardens. It’s being disassembled and moved to a new city this morning, but if you drive by the arena, you may still see portions of it standing as they work on it. Here’s more information on the installation, and a couple pictures too.

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