News

July 30, 2009

When Hitting a Speed Bump Is a Good Thing ...

A suburban Burger King is installing a system that captures the kinetic energy of cars as they roll through the drive-thru and converts it into electricity.

The franchised restaurant in Hillside, N.J., is being outfitted with what manufacturer New Energy Technologies Inc. calls an "ultra-low profile" device that cars drive over, like a speed bump. The Burtonsville, Md., company likens the mechanism to the technology used in a hybrid car to capture heat that would otherwise be vented. The up-and-down motion of the device creates friction, which in turn produces heat and then that kinetic energy is recovered by the MotionPower system and transformed into kilowatts, explains New Energy.

The Burger King installation will provide an opportunity "to field test the device in a real-world setting," the company said in a statement, noting that the MotionPower equipment is still in the prototype stage.

The operators of the Hillside Burger King, Andrew Paterno and Michael Wallstein, indicated that an average of 12,500 cars drive through the lot of the store per month, or 150,000 per year.

"It would be great to capture the wasted kinetic energy of these hundreds of thousands of cars to generate clean electricity," Paterno said in the announcement issued by New Energy.

He and Wallstein operate 12 Burger Kings in the New York City area.

News of the planned test came days after an announcement that a McDonald's franchisee in North Carolina would outfit a new restaurant with plug-in stations where patrons could recharge their electric vehicles.