Since its launch on January 18, Phase II of GE’s ecomagination Challenge — called “Powering your Home” — has received over 150 submissions from businesses and individual entrepreneurs. The ideas on how to more efficiently use energy in the home — and to harness wind, solar, hydro and biomass power — range from plastic-barrel solar heaters to rooftop-mounted wind turbines to piezoelectric flooring in your living room (it generates energy from the pressure you exert when walking on it). In no particular order, we’ve pulled a few interesting ones to give you a taste of the submitted ideas. Click here to check out the full list of entries.
- Self-powered apartment buildings: Imagine if your apartment building was powered entirely by “a system of wind turbines on circular guides” covering the entire façade of the building. The wind would move the turbines along the guides, and the “mechanical movement” would be converted into electrical energy for the building. Granted, the idea isn’t entirely new: The Bahrain World Trade Center featured the world’s first building-integrated wind turbines. According to Popular Science, only three turbines “supply 15% of the electricity for the two buildings — roughly the same amount used by 300 homes.” Imagine if turbines covered the entire building!
- Transit Tunnels That Power Your City: This turbine would “convert a transit tunnel into a modular turbine that gains wind power from speeding vehicles.” This idea would be particularly relevant for urban areas, and shows how existing infrastructure could be adapted for new power generating purposes. According to the NY/NJ Port Authority, approximately 202,000 cars go through the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels every day. If those two tunnels were equipped with wind turbines, every one of those cars would be an energy source.
- Solar driveways: Pave a house’s “driveways, walkways, patios, sports courts, etc. with multi-functional solar panels” that could “be turned on for illumination at night, [used to] recharge electric vehicles with renewable energy, and — most importantly — power the home with energy from the sun.” According to the Department of Energy, the average U.S. household uses 30.7 kWh of electricity a day. If a household installed just two 12’x12’ solar panels for their driveway, the panels could potentially generate almost 50% of the household’s daily electricity (based on data from Solar Roadways).
- Personal Wind Turbines: What would you say to having your very own wind turbine? Don’t think it’s feasible? Verde Sustainable Solutions wants to “purchase small wind turbines and then lease them to homes and businesses,” thereby “allowing people to pay the same amount each month for green energy.” When the wind isn’t blowing, you get your power from your local utility; when the wind is blowing, you get your electricity from the wind turbine; and when the wind is blowing and you’re not using any power, your meter will run backwards (saving you money) as you’ll be supplying energy to the local utility. Right now, if you want to run your home on a residential wind generator, you have only two options: You can either build one (!) or buy one. Renting a wind turbine could potentially bring green energy to almost anyone, anywhere.
Tunnel vision: The wind turbines would also work in train tunnels. Image: City Speed Turbine.
* See the winners of the first phase of the $200 million ecomagination Challenge, in which GE and its four venture capital partners made investments in 12 companies that had submitted ideas.
* Read coverage on GreenBiz
