Creating Energy from Subway Motion

Like systems used in electric vehicles like the Prius, an energy company think it could attach flywheels to subway trains and use the kinetic energy of their movement to generate energy that would feed back into the system.

1 minute read

September 11, 2011, 7:00 AM PDT

By Tim Halbur


Subway trains use a significant amount of energy to get going, up to 4 megawatts, writes Timon Singh:

"That's enough energy to power 1,300 average U.S. homes. The power usage is so great that train departures are staggered in order to accomdate the availability of power."

Vykon, the company developing the flywheels, thinks it can generate up to 4 megawatts from the subway's kinetic energy and send it back into the system.

Sunday, September 4, 2011 in Inhabitat

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