Check out one of the design entries for this year’s GE Ecomagination Challenge. On first glance it’s your standard road tunnel but a closer look reveals its energy creating potential. The CitySpeed Turbine designed by Alessandra Rapaccini and Giacomo Sanna can help create energy for cities by utilising the strong air currents within the tunnel to power turbines. These modular turbines generate energy in the same way that a windmill does, only without the extra space that a windmill needs. This new design can be put into action in existing tunnels and is a great urban solution to producing energy.
The CitySpeed Turbine can work in both train and car tunnels. With hundreds of thousands of cars, buses, trains and even bikes travelling around cities every day (202,000 different vehicales passing through the Holland and Lincoln tunnels in New York every 24 hours) the possibility for inner city power production is gigantic. Watch this space, no doubt there will be many more brilliant ideas to come from the Ecomagination Challenge.
Tunnel turbines are just one example of many ways of alternative energy generation. Find out more about how you can plug into better electricity here.
(Spotted on FastCompany)
Katherine Hui is currently the Social site editor at Green Thing, a web-based public service in London that inspires people to lead greener lives through creative content.
Before this, she worked as the Development Manager at Social Innovation Camp, an organization that encourages people to use web and mobile-based technology to mobilise social change. She oversaw 300 ideas submission and helped build 20 prototypes – five of which have gone on to get further funding or investment.
Katherine’s came over to the UK form Canada in 2007 for an MSc program at the London School of Economics. Before arriving in London, she managed a small environmental start-up in Vancouver called the Canadian Climate Change Alliance.
Katherine is football mad. She is a loyal supporter of Arsenal FC, plays for Islington Borough Ladies FC and coaches for Gunners in Islington in her spare time. Her second favourite hobby is kite surfing and she can sometimes be found chasing the wind.
