New Way to Capture Wasted Energy Being Tested by Burger King?

by George Delozier

As more and more companies begin to feel the increasing cost of energy, there has been a steadily increasing number of innovative and "interesting" ideas being brought forward to help drive that cost down. One of the latest being a kinetic energy capturing system being employed by...Burger King?

That's right, the king is going green by partnering with New Energy Technologies and acting as a testbed for a new system that will capture energy from cars running over a speed bump and using it to power some of the businesses appliances. The system would be mounted somewhere in the drive through lane, where nearly 150,000 cars pass through each year. As a vehicle passes over, it will force a mechanism downward and produce electricity which will be captured two times every day.

New Energy Technologies hasn't revealed much about the design or how much energy will be recaptured, but due to the small amount of movement, it will likely not be too much. From the sounds of it, the system may also be installed in other locations if it proves to be a cost effective way to save a small amount of money.

Jalopnik

George Delozier
Motorized Innovations
InventorSpot.com

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Comments

hmm

Submitted on July 29th, 2009 by Anonymous

From the looks of the computer animation, I'm very skeptical of how much energy these speed bumps will produce...

I hope to hear more technical information soon! If anyone has any, please share!

might as well ask drivers to donate their gas!!!!

Submitted on July 30th, 2009 by Anonymous

this is stealing!!!! pure and simple, the car has to spend extra fuel to pull over those tabs so your car is actually powering a private company profits....anything wrong with that? how about making customers bring their own water to flush the toilet so "they" can "conserve" water (do you see the irony!!!!)

good point

Submitted on August 5th, 2009 by Anonymous

good point

i see your point and i

Submitted on August 8th, 2009 by Anonymous

i see your point and i agree, but the drive through is not the only way you can order something. at least they're trying new clean technology. when it gets to the point of donating water... well, then yeah, thats f up

stealing? Nonsense.

Submitted on August 13th, 2009 by Anonymous

A speed bump is expected in many places. Is putting speed bumps in a parking lot stealing? Of course not. Is putting speed bumps in a place where folks are expected to go slow stealing? Nonsense. A speed bump is a speed bump. This one captures energy.