|
|
| Fig. 1: Disneyland in 2022. (Source: Wikimedia Commons). |
In 2009, Pavegen, a company based in London, was launched with the mission to produce clean electricity through the power of footsteps. [1] Its product is a floor tile that captures and converts the kinetic energy that is created by footsteps into useable electricity. [1,2] Since places around the globe like Washington DC, Rio de Janeiro, and London have installed these kinetic floor tiles to light up their streets, I began to wonder: how much energy can Disneyland (see Fig. 1) get from installing Pavegen's tiles down Main Street? [2,3]
Using the information on Table. 1, we can assume that on average, about 28,000 people visit the park every day. [4] Since every person who enters and leaves Disneyland needs to go through Main Street, I imagine having Pavegen's tiles installed from the start of Main Street shops to the Snow White Castle. I estimate the distance between these two points to be 500 feet, which is about a tenth of a mile. (See Fig. 2). Now, to encourage all attendees to walk on the Pavegen tiles as they enter and leave the park during their Disneyland trip, at the very least, I would make the width of this pavement wide enough to have 3 people walk side by side with enough distance from one another.
Around how many footsteps will it take guests to get from one point to the other? I have measured out and estimated an average stride length of 2.7 feet, so to complete a mile (5280 feet), an average person takes about 1,956 steps. Since the walk between the start of Main Street shops to the Snow-White Castle is roughly a tenth of a mile, I estimate that Disneyland guests will take 196 footsteps. This information is important because if Pavegen's tile is designed to compress an unnoticeable amount of Δh = 5 mm per footstep and we assume that the average person has a mass of M = 100 kg, each footstep can produce no more than [2]
|
||||||||
| Table 1: Yearly Attendance at Disneyland from 2019 to 2021. [4] |
| MgΔh | = | 100 kg × 9.8 m sec-2 × 5.0 × 10-3 m | = | 4.9 J |
where g is the acceleration due to gravity. Since there can be energy losses when the energy is transferred from the footstep to the tile, I will assume each tile can produce only 3 Joules of energy (61% of the theoretical energy calculation). It is also evident that I am assuming that every guest has the same stride length and that the tile will produce only 3 Joules of energy regardless of a person's weight. Obviously, people have different stride lengths, can weigh more or less than 100 kg, and can walk the strip more than 2 times during their Disneyland trip, but for the purpose of this first approximate calculation, I shall estimate that the daily energy production of the pavement is
| 2 × | 28,000 guests d-1 ×
196 footsteps guest-1
× 3 J footstep-1 3.6 × 106 J kWh-1 |
= | 9.15 kWh d-1 |
 |
| Fig. 2: Disneyland Map. (Source: Wikimedia Commons). |
Though there is a lot of foot traffic in Main Street, kinetic pavement with Pavegen's tiles is not worth pursuing at Disneyland. The current technology can only generate about 9 kilowatt hours, which is insignificant compared to Disneyland's electricity usage. To put things in perspective, all six Disney Parks collectively use over a billion kWh of electric energy per year. [5] If we were to split this electricity usage evenly, Disneyland hypothetically uses about 460,000 kwh per day (1.67 × 108 kwh in a year). Thus, kinetic pavement down Main Street can only make 0.002% of this electricity, which is not enough to power a ride or parade. It is only sufficient to power thirty 100 W light bulbs for 3 hours. Pavegen's tiles are also expensive. [1] Fortunately, prices are expected to drop as the company scales up its production with other manufacturing partners. [1] Kemball Cook, the founder of Pavegen, hopes to get the price of each tile down to $50. [1]
I am hopeful that Pavegen's technology can one day be optimized to the point that kinetic pavement on Main Street, USA can light up all the lights with clean and green energy. These kinetic floor tiles can even help create unity among the guests as they walk together to light up the night at the Happiest Place on Earth.
© Luis Jimenez. The author warrants that the work is the author's own and that Stanford University provided no input other than typesetting and referencing guidelines. The author grants permission to copy, distribute and display this work in unaltered form, with attribution to the author, for noncommercial purposes only. All other rights, including commercial rights, are reserved to the author.
[1] T. K. Grose, "Tiles May Help Shrink Carbon Footprint by Harnessing Pedestrian Power," National Geographic, 18 May 12.
[2] G. Webster, "Green Sidewalk Makes Electricity One Footstep at a Time," CNN, 13 Oct 11.
[3] L. Taylor, "From Favelas to the White House, Tiles Turn Footsteps Into Electricity," Reuters, 18 Jul 16.
[4] M. Palicki et al., "Theme Index and Museum Index 2021," Themed Entertainment Association, 2021.
[5] H. Howell, "Disney and Nuclear Energy," Physics 240, Stanford University, Winter 2019.
