Our Innovation Analysts recently looked into emerging technologies and up-and-coming startups working on solutions for the energy sector. As there is a large number of startups working on a wide variety of solutions, we decided to share our insights with you. This time, we are taking a look at 5 promising kinetic energy utilization solutions.
Heat Map: 5 Top Kinetic Energy Utilization Solutions
For our 5 top picks, we used a data-driven startup scouting approach to identify the most relevant solutions globally. The Global Startup Heat Map below highlights 5 interesting examples out of 75 relevant solutions. Depending on your specific needs, your top picks might look entirely different.
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Energy Floors – Kinetic Footfall
With the rising demand for renewable energy generation, smart cities search for more options that are both sustainable and economical. One of them is kinetic footfall, a system powered by piezoelectrics and human footsteps. Embodied in mats, pavements and floor tiles for busy urban areas, kinetic footfall solutions take the pressure of people’s walking and convert their kinetic energy into electricity while emitting no pollutants and leaving no dangerous waste.
Dutch startup Energy Floors designs and manufactures interactive smart flooring solutions for gamified physical training and dancing as well as crowd control and navigation in smart cities. Intermediated by footfall sensors, the startup’s solutions not only power specific electricity needs in schools and communities but also collect big data to be further analyzed.
Kinetech Power – Kinetic Energy Storage
Kinetic energy storage facilities usually ground on the use of a flywheel system that constantly accelerates and decelerates a rotor in order to store energy. Unlike traditional chemical-based batteries, kinetic energy storage acts as a “mechanical battery” able to maintain energy thanks to high-speed spinning cycles. Its application areas vary from mobility to renewable energy and grid storage.
Mexican startup Kinetech Power creates high-speed hybrid flywheel kinetic energy storage solutions made of carbon fiber, for the telecom, utilities, and microgrid sectors. The combination of patented design and bearing technology decreases installation costs and achieves energy efficiency and durability.
Blackburn Energy – Vehicle Energy Harvesting
With technological advancements in automotive and energy harvesting, it becomes possible to recover and utilize vibration, friction, braking, suspension and heat losses in smart vehicles with the use of kinetic harvesters. Based on electromagnetic, electrostatic, or piezoelectric transducers, harvesting modules transform the accumulated energy of a vehicle’s movement into a new source of power, ensuring higher fuel efficiency and overall productivity.
The US-based startup Blackburn Energy develops RelGen, a solution comprising hardware and software, aimed at wasted kinetic energy recovery in trucks. Powered by vehicle’s driveshafts, the company’s alternators generate power in a closed-loop and provide algorithmic energy data management as well as carbon reporting.
Kinecto – Kinetic Phone Chargers
Modern mobile phones perform a lot of energy-consuming functions. Combined with the fast pace of our urban life, they often are charged “on-the-go”, which opens new market opportunities for kinetic chargers. Developed as a separate device or as a smartphone add-on, they translate the vibrations and movements of the human body or the mobile itself into a back-up power to charge the latter on demand.
The Qatar-based startup Kinecto offers a wireless smartphone and small electronics charger based on the energy of human movements. In contradiction to wires and power banks, it only takes energy, generated by people’s everyday physical activity.
GKinetic – Hydrokinetic Power Generation
Compared to conventional hydropower production that extracts potential energy from falling water, hydrokinetic plants create power from water movements without building additional dams and structures. They utilize powerful turbines, capable of mobilizing the motion of ocean tides, coastal waves, and fast rivers flow to generate electricity and make one more step towards reducing the planet’s dependence on fossil fuels.
Irish startup GKinetic manufactures a proprietary vessel device with two turbines, made of recyclable materials, for hydrokinetic power production. Their patented design increases the speed of water in oceans, rivers, and estuaries, as well as generates more electricity from accelerated water motion in low flows. Besides, the system includes a vessel remote monitoring option.
What About The Other 70 Kinetic Energy Utilization Solutions?
While we believe data is key to creating insights it can be easy to be overwhelmed by it. Our ambition is to create a comprehensive overview and provide actionable innovation intelligence for your Proof of Concept (PoC), partnership, or investment targets. The 5 kinetic energy utilization solutions showcased above are promising examples out of 75 we analyzed for this article. To identify the most relevant solutions based on your specific criteria and collaboration strategy, get in touch.
