Aviation

Powering Taxi Lights at Airports with Vibrational Energy By Lance Winslow

Many of the Nations Largest Airports use a lot of energy and when there is a black out chaos ensues. Luckily our biggest and busiest airports in the United States have back-up power for safety. If the power goes out on the grid the back-up power comes on within seconds. Unfortunately with all the energy that modern airports use, not all uses can be supported with back up power, obviously runway lights, security and safety comes first. But if we can reduce the power consumption of aviation uses such as runway and taxi lights, we can use that savings for other important uses in the terminals.

I propose we make the airport ramps and taxiways out of flexible concrete. Flexible concrete is stronger than normal concrete and will last a lot longer.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Flexible-Concrete-for-Runways&id=69938

Since this concrete is flexible it will produce waves and vibrations. So I propose we turn this vibration into energy to power up the taxi lights. By using bright LED blue lights for taxiways and LED white lights for the runway, which are extremely energy efficient this maybe possible. Let me explain.

The Heavy Aircraft Flexing the concrete will provide what we need. This technology is being used now on a smaller scale. Currently they can power up the flashlights using electromagnetic induction technology to charge a capacitor instead of working off a battery. There are some nifty micro-flashlights being used which you can buy which use a similar technique and are available thanks to the Everlite Flashlight technology research lab. These smaller flashlights work by shaking them for about thirty seconds and shine for about 6 minutes and they shine quite bright since they use a very bright LED light. Here is a link to this home use flashlight:

http://demo.physics.uiuc.edu/LectDemo/scripts/demo_descript.idc?DemoID=1138

Here is a quick movie you can watch online to see how this technology works.

http://www.modernoutpost.com/gear/movies/ee_forever.MPG

I propose we use the engine rumble of the runway and taxiways to run the airport lights. If they get too dim from lack of aircraft traffic then the system would revert back to the normal airport power or in a back-up situation to the back up power, however only as needed in order to conserve. Perhaps this is a good way to save power at our World’s busiest airports? Think on this.