| Green Energy |
  Dr Lucy Edery-Azulay at Technion test site.
Innowatech’s patented technology generates
electricity from piezoelectric crystals embedded
in the asphalt
By Amanda Jaffe-Katz
Drive to the upper limits of the Technion campus and you’ll witness history in the making. And electricity in the making, too. The world’s first stretch of electric road is being tested by the innovative company Innowattech Ltd, spearheaded by Prof. Haim Abramovich of the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering.
Innowattech has developed a new class of technology for producing green energy, generating electricity by an infrastructure of piezoelectric generators and electronic storage systems.
When a vehicle passes over a road, the road deflects vertically due to the weight of the vehicle.
Piezoelectric generators are embedded under the asphalt, minimizing potential energy waste. Potential energy is stored in the piezoelectric generators and used to produce electricity. The storage system consists of electronic components which transfer the energy from the piezoelectric generators to the storage device. The harvested energy can be transferred back to the grid, or used for infrastructure such as street lighting.
“The Innowattech system harvests energy that ordinarily goes to waste,” says Dr Lucy Edery-Azulay, Senior Technologist and Project Manager for Innowattech. The energy production method is applicable to roadways, railways, runways, and even pedestrian movement such as walking, running, and dancing.
When applied to roads, the system works optimally when car and truck traffic is at least 600 vehicles per hour. The system can produce up to 500 killowatt-hours (kWh) from a 1 km stretch of dual carriageway - enough energy to power 600 to 800 homes.
“In Israel alone there are sufficient busy roads to produce 250 megawatt-hours (MWh) of energy using Innowattech’s solution,” says Edery-Azulay.
Prompted by ecological considerations as well as a desire to lessen dependence on carbon-based fossil fuels, alternative electricity production from green sources has increased. “Each of the alternative energy methods currently in use is characterized by major disadvantages while ours offers economic advantages,” she says. “It is independent of specific environmental factors like sunlight or wind, and, in addition, the predicted time of return on investment is just a couple of years - as opposed to over two decades for other methods.”
Edery-Azulay summarizes: “Our technology makes it possible to produce significant amounts of electricity and route it directly into existing power lines or the grid in the most efficient, convenient, economical, and green way.”
In the future, this technology can also serve to gather information creating “Smart Roads.” In addition to energy production, real-time data on the weight, frequency and distances between passing vehicles can be generated.
“Piezoelectric materials have become increasingly common in a range of industrial applications,” explains Edery-Azulay, who was awarded both her BSc and MSc degrees from the Faculty of Civil Engineering. “Many researchers have developed both analytical and numerical models to realize the so-called smart or adaptive structures. Yet, for the first time in the world, Innowattech offers breakthrough piezoelectric applications for the civil engineering sector.”
Under the supervision of Prof. Haim Abramovich, Edery-Azulay earned her PhD in 2007 with a thesis titled “Integrity of Smart Structures Having Piezoelectric Patches.” Abramovich says, “Lucy’s research can be considered one of the state-of-the-art topics in the emerging interdisciplinary area of smart structures.”
“I’m sure that my job in the current project is beneficial to my career and personal development and enhances my scientific potential,” comments
Edery-Azulay.
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