This hi-tech football game Field Generates Its Own Electricity

Lagos, Nigeria's megacity, wherever seventeen million individuals area unit golf shot a heavy strain on the facility grid, has AN untapped supply of energy virtually at its feet.

Over the past year, researchers at British technology company Pavegen have engineered a football game pitch that converts energy from players’ footsteps into electricity, that successively powers the lights that illuminate the sector, in line with a report in Quartz. the same field was disclosed in Brazil in 2014.

In Lagos, the new football game field offers a glimpse at a clean, property thanks to meet Nigeria's soaring energy demands.

The country has been full of fuel shortages in recent months. And, as in several developing countries, demand for electricity can probably still swell.

"Developing countries area unit on AN up ramp, in terms of demand for electricity," Rachel Cleetus, leading economic expert and climate policy manager at the Union of involved Scientists, told The Huffington Post on Th.

Tapping into renewable energy sources are going to be key to meeting developing countries' growing thirst for electricity, whereas conjointly mitigating the environmental threats expose by fossil fuels.

"These countries are attempting to expand energy access and shut the energy gap, whereas attempting to appear for low-carbon, efficient ways in which to try and do that," Cleetus aforesaid.

In countries like African country, technologies that generate power while not wishing on the grid hold explicit promise. Nearly 1/2 Nigeria's population lacks access to electricity. In Lagos, eighty % of individuals trust diesel generators to stay the lights on. But, aforesaid Cleetus, diesel generators are not ideal.

"They break; the fuel is dear," she noted.

Renewable, off-grid energy sources will facilitate expand electricity access quicker and at a lower price than diesel generators. they'll conjointly give energy a lot of dependably than centralized grids, that area unit probably to become more and more at risk of extreme weather related to temperature change, Cleetus aforesaid.

Nigeria's passionate football game followers adds to the new technology's attractiveness. For a rustic voted the foremost soccer-crazed nation in 2014, harnessing the collective energy of uncountable sprinting athletes to get electricity has AN nearly poetic appropriateness.

For hi-tech tile manufacturer Pavegen, the people-powered field represents a primary step in a trial to revolutionize the manner African country generates electricity.

“I believe that we are going to amendment the manner individuals see energy as we start to scale and absolutely industrialize the Pavegen technology,” Pavegen business executive Laurence Kemball-Cook wrote in a very unharness in December. “We’re hoping to put in our technology across the African region at some point.”

Like any new energy technology, football game fields that rework footsteps into electricity area unit unlikely to be a curative for energy-strapped countries.

Kemball-Cook has acknowledged the technology’s limitations. “We're not attempting to create Pavegen the only energy supply to power each town within the future,” he told Radio France hymn in December. “We believe it’s progressing to be one among the key constituents of the energy mixture of the longer term.”

Pavegen received alittle grant in 2011 from Shell LiveWIRE, AN accelerator travel by company Royal Dutch Shell, to boost the tiles. It partnered with Shell to create the fields in Brazil and African country.

Questions stay regarding the cost-effectiveness of changing footsteps into electricity. Pavegen has not disclosed the value of its tiles, however the corporate claims to possess cut the value of production significantly over the last many years.

“We've reduced the value by over five hundred %, to regarding twenty % over traditional flooring that you simply may notice in a very typical shopping precinct in continent,” Kemball-Cook aforesaid, per RFI.

It is conjointly unclear however simply the tiles can be put in in, say, a foreign village wherever they could be of most use. Pavegen didn't reply to an invitation for comment from HuffPost.

Despite some lingering queries, the project is important. It represents a step toward decentralised, renewable energy production in a very country in desperate want of a lot of reliable access to electricity.