The first motorway toll booth that generates energy thanks to the cars that pass through it: it is in Italy, on the A28

A deceleration lane designed to generate clean energy from the cars that pass through it. Connected to a generator, it converts the slowing of vehicles into electricity. In a year, it can generate up to 100 kilowatt-hours, enough to power an entire school.

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highway toll booth that produces energy

When you approach a highway toll booth, you usually slow down. And it's precisely this deceleration that some Italian physicists and engineers have decided to use to generate energy. The concept, simplified, is physically similar to the wave motion of ocean waves: Cars, when slowing down, produce kinetic energy that can be transformed into electricity through a generator.

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MOTORWAY TOLL STATION THAT PRODUCES ENERGY

The startup Underground Power, led by Milanese entrepreneurs Massimiliano Nosenzo and Andrea Mario Corneo, has come up with a way to harness highway traffic to generate electricity using a simple, evocatively named asphalt platform. Lybra, as the special device is called, is nothing more than a platform flush with the asphalt, like a short deceleration lane, which generates electricity through the braking of cars traveling on it.

As cars pass, the platform deforms: it stretches and tightens, and as it deforms, it increases the frictional force needed to slow the vehicles. Friction is a natural physical phenomenon, and usually releases energy in the form of kinetic energy, which dissipates very easily. But Lybra, lowering itself by 3 cm, activates a generator that turns the energy released during braking into electricity, It also serves as storage, as it would otherwise be lost to the atmosphere. And there's more good news: the brakes, thanks to Lybra, wear out much less.

highway toll booth that produces energy
The Lybra platform seen from above

ASPHALT PLATFORM THAT PRODUCES ENERGY

After a 9-month pilot project in the access road of the shopping centre in Rescaldina, in the province of Milan, and subsequently in Altavilla Vicentina, the young startuppers have verified that the technology they invented really works: they have produced approximately 100 kWh of electricity in one year, that is, the amount of energy typically needed to run an entire school.

They thus continued on the path of perfecting and experimenting with the Lybra project, arriving at testing it and installing it on the Telepass lane at the toll booth of theA28 Cordignano Motorway, to be precise, on the exit and on the entrance. Two platforms that exploit the approximately 5600 daily accesses to generate up to 15.770 kWh per year, more or less the entire needs of about five houses inhabited by four people.

LYBRA UNDERGROUND POWER PROJECT

Not only practically zero-cost electricity, but also and above all environmental benefits. Producing electricity without waste materials, and 11.000 tons less carbon dioxide.

The energy produced by the Cordignano platform, however, can currently only be consumed on-site, for example, to power lighting systems, but Lybra is poised to become a backup source for other alternative energy sources. The successful project will be implemented, and the energy-generating platform will soon be installed in other areas of the highway network, especially in the Veneto region.

(Images highlighted and accompanying the text taken from the Facebook page of UP – Underground Power)

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