Will's Global Issues: Pushing Towards an Energy Revelation

In today’s day and age, coming up with new energy ideas is at the forefront of many minds around the world. These ideas have ranged from solar to wind to nuclear. Another idea has been to harness the kinetic energy produced by an action and use that as a source of power and usable energy. Perhaps the most practical version of this new idea is already starting to give promising results. The first setting for this door is the entrance to the Natuurcafé La Port in the Driebergen-Zeist train station of The Netherlands. This technology has also moved across the Atlantic Ocean, where scientists in New York City are working on the door and its functions.

The process by which these doors collect energy are quite simple. First, a person pushes the door. Next, the movement of the doors creates kinetic energy. Then, this kinetic energy is captured by a generator. And finally, the generator sends the harnessed energy to supercapacitors for storage and distribution. This also makes the conditions that must be met for these doors to work possessable. The doors must have the necessary energy producing and storing equipment attached and back-up energy sources need to be put in place if the area(s) that the doors power can no longer be supported by just the doors. One of the biggest upsides that revolving kinetic doors have are that there is no waste. It is not like nuclear energy when you have a great energy source but also a great amount of nuclear waste. Instead these doors only produce energy that can be used. There may not be any government investments in these doors at the current moment, but as more and more scientists look into this idea, government interest is bound to spark.

The whole process of how this energy gets from its point of origin to its destination is quite ingenious. After the door revolves and the kinetic energy is produced, the generators that harness it send the energy into storing mechanisms called supercapacitors. These mechanisms serve the purpose of being the holding cells for the newly-produced energy and also has the distributors that send the energy to the area that it will be required to power. After the energy is sent, rather than needing a conversion, it powers what it needs to immediately. This makes this energy system a decentralized system because the energy that the doors produce will be used in the building that the doors are built into. The unfortunate thing about this energy production method is that it cannot translate to automobiles.

While these may be a great source of energy, it will take a LOT of revolving doors to create an impact on the world energy usage. Essentially, any building that has or could use a revolving door, would need a kinetic energy revolving door installed. But this is the world-view obstacle. If someone’s goal is to find an easier way to power a building, then the kinetic energy revolving doors are definitely the way to go. This reason is also the driving business incentive for why buildings should incorporate kinetic revolving doors into their building plans (or renovation plans). From the public standpoint, this new inclusion can help them be a part of energy production and let them know that they are producing energy. This awareness is something that the scientists and engineers in New York plan on including: they would set up an electronic display that showed how much energy each person produced. Revolving kinetic doors also make a compelling argument for why governments should use them: their installation process is not mind-bendingly difficult, nor is how they work. Lastly, and light-heartedly, kids can also really take part in the energy-producing process of these doors because there are very few things in this world that a child finds more fun than going around and around and around in a revolving door.

Table 1. Energy savings comparison

Revolving Door Usage	50%	75%	100%
Saving of annual Energy consumption	14.5%	38.7%	74.0%
# of houses the saved energy can heat in one year	1.0	2.7	5.1
# of years the saved energy can light a 100W bulb	5.8	15.3	29.0

Note. Adapted from “Modifying habits towards sustainability: a study of revolving door usage on the MIT

campus” by B.A. Cullum, O. Lee, S. Sukkasi, and D. Wesolokski, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2006.

Here is a video of these innovative revolving doors featuring the engineers from Fluxxlab. Fluxxlab is based in New York City and one of the organizations that is working on these doors.