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Pavegen and Siemens to Integrate Kinetic Energy Harvesting into Microgrids

February 01, 2018 by Paul Shepard

Pavegen has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Siemens to bring its technology to smart city projects around the world. Pavegen, a team of 30, produces an interactive flooring technology which converts the kinetic energy of footfall into off-grid electricity, data and rewards.

Having delivered more than 200 installations around the world, the firm is looking to build on its portfolio of permanent installations which include transport hubs such as Heathrow and a leading Middle Eastern airport - launching this March, a park in Washington DC, schools in the US and UK, corporate HQs and sports facilities in cities including London, Rio and Seoul. The firm is headquartered in London, with a research and development team in Cambridge, the UK's tech hub.

Laurence Kemball-Cook, founder and CEO, Pavegen says: "Pavegen is all about putting people at the heart of smart city infrastructure. Siemens has the skills, resources and network to help us deploy at scale in key locations such as transport hubs and new build developments."

Jenny Bofinger-Schuster, Senior Vice President Sustainability and Cities says: "This is an exciting opportunity to combine Siemens' engineering and project management skills with Pavegen's innovative technology which connects people directly to energy generation and data collection."

Working together, the team will initially be targeting airport infrastructure, mixed use developments, hospitals and looking to integrate Pavegen technology into local distributed energy grids.

The Pavegen surface consists of a series of interlocking triangles. As people walk across the patented system, the top surface moves vertically by between 5mm and 10mm.

This downward force creates a rotation in the electro-magnetic generators below, which produces around 5 Watts of continuous off-grid power for the duration of the footstep. The system also incorporates Low Power Bluetooth beacons which can reward users for their steps via apps.