Richard Zurawski

Every time you get up, walk, stop, sit down, move you not only use energy, but you waste energy. Now some bright, enterprising young engineer has created a device that allows you to waste less. Its a small device that is attached to your upper leg that makes use of the energy that you use is getting from A to B and converts it to a rechargeable  battery. Its small enough that it takes very little energy and its efficient enough to keep a cell phone and a host of other devices permanently operating. Camera batteries, cell phones, computers and host of our other ubiquitous devices that all need batteries now have the potential of being run off a small power converter that taps into energy that would otherwise go unused and wasted.

What an amazing leap forward. Now imagine where this will take us. I am going to spend a few paragraphs on a flight of fancy and I urge you to do the same and see what you come up with.

How many of us work out in gyms. Imagine if we harnessed the tread machines, the stair masters, the free weights, the bow flexes et al to a converter that could store that otherwise wasted energy. Want home heat? Just get your kiester on that stationary bike and do a few miles. There are huge numbers of people out there who we could harness into the grid just through exercise alone. I could even see a cottage industry where we tap into people who have nothing better to do than to provide energy to the grid. You could become a career energy provider. Down on your luck and need a few bucks? go down to the local energy bar and cycle a few kilowatts into the grid and get your next meal.

Instead of having people wander the streets begging for coins, you could just hook them into the grid and get your energy from them as well as a service for all the coins. I could even imagine some enterprising sorts out there, and there is no shortage of them, is there, creating a bank of willing bodies for the lazier among us who would like to hire other people’s kinetics to keep warm, toasty and flush in energy.

It could even go further. We could mandate that all sporting events, amateur and professional, have a energy recapture system from all the athletes that would power the sports channels. But why stop there There are pets, pet walkers, just about anything that moves could become a portable battery charger. Imagine a new born being outfitted right from birth with devices that would keep us in lights, electricity and warmth. All their wiggling and squirming would truly be boon since we are making so many new babies, some 90 million a year!

The adage “be careful what you wish for” might apply in this case. Instead of creating more energy, perhaps we should consider using less. The end of my flight of fancy!