More cool alternative energy ideas: Harnessing the power of play

In my daily news reading on the internets I always pay special attention to green and alternative energy stories.  This is probably partly because of the project we are doing (Minerva likes green energy), but also because my dad has almost always worked in nuclear power, so I’ve been thinking about electricity sources for a long time 🙂  One of my most recent posts was about harnessing a plant-microbe fuel cell.  Today, I want to talk about projects that work to harvest the energy potential of play.

So there are 4 different projects I want to talk about today that are trying to harness the near-infinite energy of children playing.  First,  a BYU senior capstone project sponsored by Empower Playgrounds.  A group of engineering students at BYU developed a merry-go-round that generates electricity when spun, and installed it at a school in Ghana.

The power generated by the merry-go-round is stored in a car battery that recharges several dozen portable LED lights that can be used in classrooms and homes. Many families have little or no lighting in the evenings, relying on kerosene lamps, candles, or open flame “bobo” lights. [Empower Playgrounds founder] hopes that better lighting at home will lead to greater literacy and productivity for children and their families.

This is a simple but innovative way of developing power, and it seems that the children enjoy playing on it (see the slides and pictures for evidence of that).

The next cool idea (Play Pumps)also uses a merry-g0-round, but this one uses the energy to pump water.  From the second link from the top (play):

Playpump is a children’s merry-go-round attached to a water pump and a water storage tank. The idea is brilliantly simple, kids play and pump water from the ground into a nearby storage tank at a rate of around 1,400 litre per hour. The systems actually uses less effort than traditional pumps and advertising on the water tank pays for any maintenance.

From the Play Pumps link though, it seems that there are difficulties with the bureaucracy and legislative bodies and stuff, so they are having trouble getting the project idea utilized very well.

The next project, Play Made Energy, is also having problems implementing their idea.  They basically hooked a see-saw up to a generator and letting poor African kids play and make electricity.  Their website says that:

Development of the Energee-Saw, a simple see-saw which generates renewable electricity, is currently under review due to the unavailability of a third party product component.

So they’ve got a great idea, but they’re just having problems making it happen.

The last project from Uncharted Play is called sOccket; an energy producing soccer ball.  They basically put the gears and generator stuff that makes those shakeable dynamo flashlights work inside of a soccer ball, so that if a kid kicks it around and plays with it the mechanical energy is converted to electricity.

At the end of a 30 minute game the energy stored in each SOccket ball can light up an LED lamp for up to three hours. It can also be used to charge mobile phones and other small electronic devices.

That is pretty awesome, in my opinion.  All of these projects (and many other, I’m sure) are very innovative, and make use of the boundless energy of kids having fun to provide electricity and water to African communities.

Anyways, as far as the project goes, there should be a new comic page up today.  Our artist, Seba, is super awesome and we’re pretty confident we’ll be able to keep to our twice a week, full-color page updates.  Enjoy 🙂