Pavegen | Fully Charged

Hello, welcome to Fully Charged, my name is Roberto Elena and Fully Charged is a weekly series about the future of energy, transportation and electric vehicles. Now we managed to make all of these episodes thanks to the support of something amazing called Patreon, if you look below this. video there is a link to patreon, check it out if you want to help us, support us because it really makes this so serious, but the reason we are so passionate about doing it is because of the incredible amount of technical innovation of the development. of things like electric cars, hybrid cars, renewable energy, energy storage, a lot of areas that we're looking at, not just cars, all kinds of different things and this week's episode is very specifically about a very unusual way of generating electricity, basically I'm just walking down the street, so Lawrence, thank you so much for letting me stand on your amazing

pavegen

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It's really exciting because I've seen pictures of this, but this is the first time I've seen it in real life. you literally walk down a street thinking oh I'm generating kinetic energy, could I do something like that or where did it come from. I am an industrial designer and I was lucky to be able to go to university and have some time working, which is one of the greatest sources of energy. companies in Europe and they said, Lauren, can you make us a street lighting port with solar energy and wind energy? So I spent a year working on their company, they funded staff, they built things and after a year building streetlights, it didn't work. right, so I got laid off, I sold and then I'm going back to university hope

fully

, you know, doing industrial design.

I was really upset with his idea of ​​failure, hanging my head on the ground and I kept thinking look, we have to find a source of energy in the cities and then I walked through Victoria station in London. I remember reading that day on the BBC website that 35,000 people an hour pass by and then they walk and there are a lot of people here. I said that's a viable design here when He laughed again, they built my first prototype. He had spent 14 hours in the labs sewing pieces of loot with pieces of duct tape and I kind of showed him that you can get some energy from your steps and I guess we've been pushing. the limits because in terms of trying to make it really the highest performance possible, I think what we've done is we've taken foam, it's really very difficult and we had a little breakthrough that allowed us to build an entire company around This I did, yeah , I think the first thing we did was find a way that no one else had done before to get a really high output per step, so that when you walk it's a small amount of energy that you're governed by the laws of physics. but we can actually take power for one, two, three, four seconds with a single step, which means that instead of having to take power very quickly, we have a long power output for my electromagnetic generators, so we built them ourselves, we developed them with marcelles and So when you step on these because you can't feel a very small amount of movement under your feet, there's literally a physics?

Is there something physical that goes in and out? Yes, what's in it, so we build. about 700 prototypes in four of every day, from big old generators like 20 kilowatts that would never match them, to now we have a really small generator within its kinetic field, so it's really durable and essentially turns its way down . Rotation is part of our pattern and the force of rotation goes into a flywheel that will hold and almost all the power in the kinetics of it, the energy of its spin and the history of inertia and then around that we have a series of magnets and the copper coils are right and that's what we get from the positive EMF that gives us the energy that comes out, you know, 100 100 volts of AC that we create from the product, that's fascinating, so there's actually one thing that rotates and below, this is what yes. there is any device that is completely sealed, something interesting is that if you look at other technologies, let's say like a piss in a car engine, this piston will move billions of times during its life cycle when we put it here, we are doing a fraction of its life cycle, so it's a really small amount of fatigue that you experience over 20 years, so we've actually found a moving mechanical object that can be really durable, so that tells us that we're in these, yes, so I have to move more than that, I have to do that, yes, the more you jump, oh, yes, you can stay in the car, for example, yes, the mobile phone will use about 10 watts to charge correctly, so in that kind of spectrum or a 30 watt lamp is like a The LED tree illuminates those 30 joule wooden paddles that illuminate the tree for a second, I see, we have actually turned on a street light a few seconds ago, yeah, so you can't do anything, yet, to make people jump ten seconds from a bright LED street light right on our inflatable foam those things, so yeah, a train station with thousands of people, yeah right there yeah it's starting to make a little more sense it's a little embarrassing man it's my time to do that but this is what you expect from people if when you come to our station please come in and like it, people like eccentricity, jumping, jumping, oh, so it's the whole floor of Victoria station with this, yes, it's the power of the crowd and the best thing about what we describe there is that when there is many people are moving this fly will keep spinning oh go on and you keep it out because there is a certain initial inertia needed for the revival to stop spinning once things spin you continually get that power which means it's like a power you know, their power plant continues, you know, when Darby's 9:54 was the, you have a 10 minute power, it's been turned on, people are walking on it, therefore it's on the ground, therefore it's abuse it, therefore it is hard and Is it going to be so expensive to install and so ridiculous that the amount of electricity it generates during its useful life is less than what it costs to install it?

So those kinds of arguments, yes, I assume you've thought about that area. pretty much yeah, I mean, I think we look at the energy area, it's very controversial, a lot of people have opinions and it's great because somehow we need to fight and make the best ideas win. I guess our view is that we can make This product has a really very low cost, we can make it know as a low cost flooring as a kind of medium cost flooring, so it can be almost like utility products, that is, one and then two, it's like when we start designing the problem, we need to make sure that This thing would actually have the potential to last a long time, so for example, piezoelectric crystals taste the same as they would when you turn on your oven.

They look cool and there are a million projects related to that, but the durability is really questionable. a month, so there are certain specifications that mean it will fall short of what we know from our research and all the due diligence we did, which has the potential to be really low cost, really very durable to give you decent power, but No. We're going to feed the world and we're not going to remove all the solar panels, but you know, part of our energy mix is ​​going to be the future, especially in cities and I came out of being an engineer at 50 years old to see it, it's actually very difficult. . generate energy in open spaces and we are one of those alternatives so I think it is a combination of energy, the future will be low cost, but it is a challenge, that's why no one else has done it before, yes, so I think we would take I dismissed all that stuff and just said look, you have to have a floor anyway, yeah, you're going to replace the entire Orchestra in the next few years, well, let's drop this plate, yeah, and maybe it'll cost five percent more. that the current floor is there, but you will get a power source and you will seal data and that's another thing that we're monetizing right now is data from people moving in so yeah, can there be can there be sensors built into this? that can indicate how many people have crossed, it's like an entrance to a store or something, well, yes, and at the most basic level, every generator will have a wireless chip.

The stream will also have Bluetooth connectivity, so you really know who you are when you walk across the floor and you might have a pretty cool Big Brother. Let's imagine a retail store, now the energy of people coming in and out is kind of like light in the window now next thing is every time I walk in and let's say it's a sports store and I, Lawrence, you've taken 52 steps today, well thanks, it's part of the app and I can actually get money from my projects. The program usually requires generating energy and giving the thumbs up to scientists or, in fact, rewarding people for a digital currency and allowing them to donate the energy that Dave made in that store to perhaps help people create new ways of energy in India or and it is really understood. deep social interaction of people to engage in energy.

I think one of the things we found is that you can't really participate in renewable energy like solar panels. You know, you never see them, yeah, you can't hug the wind turbine. Could you be annoying? I heard functional. I'm a little weird. You tried, but then asking this, this is a way to really engage the people that you know, so you have the energy off the grid and you also have to we're. change people's lives internally and I never expected it to happen in terms of people using it, but you know, we see kids jumping, older people jumping and loving it and there's a really amazing feeling being a part of the energy here, yeah, putting this instead. of concrete slabs is not catastrophically more expensive and has a huge final benefit.

Yeah, I guess if you're looking at the pros and cons of installing a solar installation, you have a girl named Ruth, you have to reinforce the roof, build a structure or what angle is it about when you're laying a floor and you have to present it anyway and kind of the developers say look I have 100,000 to cover all my defects and you guys can do the floor and then suddenly the same people who would install the floor anyway, putting in a paved floor for the gym, get all the benefits. additional hence, yes, the possibility that the triangles are really solid.

I have an example here, so this allows us to have cars. Driving on it, so it's a glass-reinforced polymer that allows us to have enormously high strength, you might have to, yeah, which was to keep it as light as possible. That is an example of the triangle that can be finished off easily and also. wear and tear, you can take it off and replace it and also the other thing I know people will say is oh my bike is going to get stuck in space, they won't. I only say that because there is a lot to know, yes.

I am riding a bike with narrow rear wheels, well I have a small model on my keychain, it is on your child's finger and you should try it or install it so that the Peconic children theoretically have a space small enough for their finger. they are like a sound like a six month old baby could put a finger on it so we have to go through all our stuff, make sure it meets the British standard and then it also locks in the key place so we have a custom sound. key, so it's Harley and then you have to unlock each unit, which makes it really safe to place in cities.

I think cities are going to be increasingly difficult to live in. You know, London is growing by 3 train cars every week. Your people are going to live in a very dense environment, you know? And if you can really help people get excited, don't go to the train station right now, who's too busy?, go walk 100 more meters suddenly, however you can. Look I'm going to do great, thanks for the information, my life has improved a little bit so we really think it can be a way to improve people's lives instead of everyone worrying about stealing data about people.

It was actually a really passive way. to improve cities, yeah, is this your latest version here because I've seen several examples of all these squares here that I've seen in the field? Yeah, so I started I was in my room I was an engineer that I built Like the first five different prototypes, one rectangular, but then what we did was, as we developed as a company, we bought great engineers and we really realized that rectangles are very good because if you miss the steps in the corner, it doesn't really help. anything that can't, has to move a very small amount, we realized we made it triangular.

The triangular shape means that every millimeter of the floor gives you energy and works like a teacher. One step can activate multiple generators as you walk. that and it makes you really modular, yes, I think it looks much better and you also adapt to a modern environment, so we just developed it and it will take me years to discover what it does,It means that in a way we threw away everything we learned about the old one and had all our problems and then started wrong again and discovered that we were creating 200 times more power for Mr.

Vyse than the old cable because we have actually balanced the generator with the load type and what if there is a generator at each type of point on the entire track where all the triangles meet? That's where yes, I have a For example, here is a completely sealed unit and then inside it we're using motion here in the stereo tour and then inside this device this is where we have a fly wall that's embedded inside it and which will rotate with a series of magnetic magnets and coils. Wow, I got it, it's something alarmingly simple. It's almost like a Victorian children's game of spinning top when you put everything in, yeah, very raw like that kind of.

So when you push down, there's a thread that one of the things that in our first patent is that we have one of the most efficient ways to convert downward movement, it interprets a test and that's key because otherwise, if We're trying to generate power from ten millers directly to a magnet, there's not much travel, yeah, so going rotational gives you a much higher capacity and the trick is how to get a downward rotation out of this, it's really clever. chemical engineering along with the kind of complete electrical system, which is, you know, the hardest thing I found was if you convert the energy into one thing while he softens it and turns it into a useful source, it was actually really difficult because You know when you rectify from AC power to DC, suddenly charges are lost, so we spent a lot of time and energy to make the electronic infrastructure really simple and therefore you might feel that if you have the financing, then I could expand it, yes, what is important for us. is that when we make the product, we basically don't have all the parts that we make, so I don't have to wait for some Japanese semiconductor to give me some component, we own the entire supply chain, which is good, but it also means that I'm a vertically integrated powder company and you're a guy I've never had a job when I went straight to C company.

I have operations in nine countries for Star T and suddenly I have to figure out a lot and of course, that's a big one. opportunity, but we will do the production so that we can have millions of our Mosaic Institute in every city in the world, right, that's what we will do, you know, and that's all it is for us is just a combination. of time, when to do it at the right time, we don't want to mess up, we need to get this piece to the millions of units of production, you know, we're doing it debugging right now, it's in Washington DC, it's minus 15 degrees, we're getting it .

Abused every day of the inauguration, so thousands of people passed by and when the ants marched they could have seen more, oh yeah, so I ended up with a real famine, yeah, yeah, no, no, for the suburbs, no We come, he argues because there are more people on his own, but let's go. I don't have the political time, but if I repeat, we are learning a lot on that side, so we are learning that suddenly different types of vandalism will occur at different times, different temperatures, what that will mean, suppose there is a lot of innovation going on. a real time before we ramp up production, so where else other than Washington do we have things well in place, so we've always been very bold and our approach to growing the idea and we have it in all four corners of the world ? world, we have it in our Brazil in a socket in the favela and in Rio de Janeiro, where we use 200 tiles together with a small solar panel that stores the energy of the people who play soccer and stores the energy and the batteries and powers the sublight Wow, and that's why we received death threats, the work in that community is in the most difficult environments you can imagine, think about tourism, but we did it in collaboration with Shell, but it was an incredible way to spread a technology, in Secondly, we take at Heathrow Airport, so in Terminal 3 we now have 10,000 people a day walking on the tiles and that has been there for two years and is powering the hallway light.

I think you like to go to these kinds of crazy environments if you want and to really try it allows us to learn firsthand very quickly that it's in Nigeria again in footage of football in factories in Korea, not in North Korea, South Korea, and in only in Federation Square in Australia, right in the heart of Red Square. We have one of our oldest setups where there are powers and life ladders, so we've really pushed hard for a possibly global challenge and maybe we shouldn't have gone big so early, but it gave us a massive mount debut there. and we're really bold, try the world, you know, I have to put at least a million tiles in every major city, otherwise, I'm not destined to make a planet right, pretty simple, a million tiles with a city, more or less, yes, it is 9999, it is not expected.

Thank you so much. very good talking to you thank you