General Discussion
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(21,760 posts)Aristus
(66,522 posts)They still require energy input by the motion of the air disturbed by passing vehicles. When traffic is light, energy input decreases. Still, this is ingenious.
Jim Lane
(11,175 posts)The passing vehicles burn gasoline or use power from batteries or whatever else propels them. Much of that energy does the work of moving the vehicle along. There's some inefficiency, however, because a lot of the energy is lost as heat or does the non-useful "work" of moving the air around.
These turbines capture some of that otherwise lost energy. The effect is a reduction (a comparatively small reduction, I'm guessing) in the inefficiency of the vehicles' use of energy sources.
Aristus
(66,522 posts)You said it much better than I could.
Kaleva
(36,395 posts)There is no SOURCE of energy. Just a transformation.
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)Blue_true
(31,261 posts)Likely good for lighting a few street lamps, but large power generation is likely not in the equation. There is one energy generation technique that would be the Holy Grail of energy sources if it is ever perfected, that source would also make robotic inter-stellar space missions possible also.