CA2526213A1 - Hill generator that converts movement into electricity - Google Patents

Abstract

The Subject Matter of this invention is to transform, with the Hill Generator, the loss of energy of weights, vehicles, cars or trucks (' vehicles ') into a rotation and ultimately, in electrical energy or any other form of useful energy. So, this rotation could be used for generation of electricity or any other useful works. It is possible to do that by adding modules of Hill Generator to existing roads.
You may see what a Hill Generator looks like in Figures 1, 2 and 3.

Description

Disclosure 1 The general character of the class of article or the kind of process to which the invention (i.e.
the inventive idea) relates This invention relates to the recuperation of the loss of energy of weights, vehicles, cars or trucks ( " vehicles "), in order to produce rotation and ultimately, generate electrical energy or any other forms of energy that is appropriate. This is done with small modules of Hill Generator that convert movement into Electrical Energy (" Hill Generator that could be added to existing roads.

2 The nature in general terms of the articles or processes previously known or used which are intended to be improved or replaced by resort to the invention and of the difficulties and inconveniences which they involve Each time we accelerate a vehicle, we know we will decelerate it one day !
Typically, a vehicle that weight 2000 kg that goes at 50 km/h has 192 kJoules of Kinetic Energy and, eventually, it will need to stop for various reasons. When the vehicle stops, it dissipates this energy into the brakes. This is equivalent to send to trash important quantities of energy. The aim of this invention is to recuperate the lost energy of the vehicles, when possible, and produce something more useful than heat and dust in the brakes. Today, without my invention, the loss of energy is dissipated in the brakes, in friction, etc... More or less, without my invention, all this energy goes in useless works ( creation of heat and dusts from brakes, etc... ). By simply adding modules of Hill Generator to existing roads, it is possible to recuperate this energy and convert it into something more useful, typically, electricity that we can send back to the grid or simply use it for ourselves in the context of energy efficiency.

In order to decelerate vehicles, we have to accept that it is not secure to retrieve the Vehicles Energy in a too short distance / period of time. This is why the mechanism of the Hill Generator has to be parallel to the traffic direction. This also means that the cost of decelerating a vehicle will be increased as a function of the maximum deceleration that we can apply on it, so that it is comfortable for the passengers. As a good example, in order to decelerate from 50 km/h to 0km/h, it takes about 20 meters. This means that we have to add a few Hill Generator in Series in order to cover the entire decelerating zone.

In previous patent applications that I have seen, most/all mechanisms are perpendicular to the traffic. This immediately means that the authors of the patent were not aware of the fact that it is a must to decelerate vehicles over a decent distance, because with a perpendicular mechanism, it is only possible to decelerate vehicles with impacts at the precise moment where the vehicles cross the said mechanism. Said otherwise, in the previous example, if we were to remove the 192 kJoules of Energy from the car that goes at 50 km/h within a distance of 1 meter, the passengers would have a similar feeling as a car accident. If we put a lot of perpendicular mechanism in series, it will create vibrations each time the vehicles will hit the decelerating mechanism.

With the Hill Generator, when the vehicle advances on the machine, it create a rotation of the crankshaft and the Hill goes away at the same speed as the car goes.
Therefore, no vibrations and the net effect is like a Hill that goes away from the vehicles as it advances on the Hill Generator.
This is the big difference between my invention and others.

3 The inventive idea which the new article or process embodies, and the way in which resort to it overcomes the difficulties and inconveniences of previous practices or proposals.

If we compare it to the bridge converting linear movement into electricity ( Painchaud # 2 446 783 ), the crankshaft parallel to the traffic direction is similar, when you add a few bridges in series.
However, with the Hill Generator, this energy will be taken off the vehicles, at the appropriate moment by creating or simulating a Hill over a long distance with adjustable steepness effect controlled by the power electronic. With this Hill Generator, usually, vehicles tires will lie on more than one road segment at the same time. You may also see this Hill Generator as a Sine Wave Generator, where the sine wave runs away from the vehicles as it advances on the Hill Generator.
More or less, the vehicles have the impression to climb a hill and this decelerate the vehicles without any vibrations. To adjust the Hill Steepness, it is just a matter of increasing the counter electromotive force on the shaft of the alternators. This is done with the DC-AC Drive ( it could have been a AC to AC drive, it just depends on what type of generator we take ). More or less, we just send more current to the grid when we want to increase the hill effect on the vehicles. There is a limit to increase the hill effect. In fact, if the vehicles see a speed bump, it is because we have tried to decelerate the vehicles too quickly. There will be applications where it will be valuable to generate speed bumps and this device can do it. We only have to think about cases where police run after criminals. We can stop the car of the criminals but let pass the police.

Not only this is environmentally interesting but it produces electricity where the demand is located.
In other words, it will generate more downtown New York City than in a small town, because there are more vehicles there. When you think about it, this recuperation of energy is decentralized and it brings strength to all the utility grids, because it generates everywhere, where the demand is located.
This decentralization and independence make it almost impossible to stop the generation everywhere, unless everybody stops to use their vehicles at the same time.
When it is used in the context of Energy Efficiency, you save the Generation, Transmission and Distribution fees.

Also, because the Hill Generator uses DC alternators, there is a diode bridge that will only let pass electricity when a certain voltage or RPM has been reached. This allows us to take the appropriate gear ratio in detennining the lower speed limit where we do not want to decelerate the vehicles. For example, if we were to use this device at stops, there are conditions of traffic jam where the vehicles do not need to be decelerated because they go too slow anyway.

It is also possible to use a ratchet on the crankshaft, so that the energy can only flow one way. Said otherwise, if vehicles pass on the wrong side of the Hill Generator, it is possible to decelerate them or simply use the ratchet function to let them pass without any deceleration.
However, it is not mandatory because without ratchet, this device would work in the other direction as well.

When a ratchet is used on the crankshaft to be sure that the flow of energy is unidirectional, a Flywheel may be used to accumulate a little bit of energy and simulate a steeper hill for the vehicles.
This compensates a little bit for the predictability of energy but lower our hill steepness adjustment range.

It is also very important to add that the device can work with any other cylinder arrangement than in figure 1, meaning, with any number of moving road segments / cylinders per gravitational motor.
Also, in the text, when we say gravitational motor, we also mean inertial motor. More or less, we use the terminology to say that we remove kinetic / potential energy from the vehicles by using their inherent mass to activate our Hill Generator.

Another particularity of the Hill Generator that renders it unique is that it uses a rubber sheet on the decelerating tracks. Also, on the top of the moving road segment, there could be a thick layer of rubber. This gives plenty of flexibility to the system to accommodate all types of tires. Lets think of the difference between the tires of a truck versus a small car and we immediately understand that the Hill Generator needed this flexibility to be able to accept all sorts of tires radius. Finally, since the Hill Generator simulates a travelling sine wave, the flexibility of the rubber will push all the stuff at the end of the Hill Generator, where it can be picked up by maintenance crew. Lets think here of the snow and the snow machines.

This rubber sheet combined with the sine wave effect allow the system to be drained mostly by the existing road infrastructure. Although there is a drain on the foundation of the Hill Generator, this drain will not play the same role as the city drain, for example. It is only there to make sure there is no water accumulation inside the Hill Generator. The City drains continue to play their roles and our structure will redirect water to the City drains.

The single lane model shown on figure one uses two decelerating tracks and could be used for multiple lanes applications but we believe that multiple lanes applications will use moving road segments that have the same width as a full lane width. The model that we show uses 4 sections, each with 2 decelerating tracks and 4 gravitational motors per decelerating tracks ( see figure 3).
However, it is also possible to connect it in a multitude of other configurations, including configurations where there is normal asphalt between each decelerating module.
Also, it is possible to use a multiple lane model. However, in this case, the decelerating tracks could be the same width as the lane, to avoid going in and out of the decelerating tracks.

The most important factor in building these device is to avoid putting too much inertia in the moving part of the road because we do not want the device to remember the speed of the last vehicles that passed on it. The role of this section is to transfer the energy to the alternator. So, the less inertia we have on the crankshaft and on the moving part of the road, the better it is. This is why the device is built this way.

Also, the model with decelerating tracks could be put underground or above, it is really not a problem. However, its design allow snow machines to pass on it without damaging it, because of the middle section. Also, since the decelerating tracks act as travelling sine waves, the snow and other stuff are pushed naturally at the extremity of the Hill Generator, where they are picked up by the snow machines.

For train applications, the functioning of the gravitational motor is similar but it is obvious that the wheel of a train are different than the wheel of a car. For applications like that, the decelerating tracks would be less wider and the moving road segment that would rack the train wheel to simulate a Hill Effect would be stronger.

For landing airplanes applications, the decelerating tracks will obviously be stronger but the principle would be similar.

4 A full description of the best way of using or putting into operation the inventive idea. If there are drawings, the description should be preceded by a list of these drawings and should be related to them by the use of the numerals which appear upon them.

Patent Title : Hill Generator that convert movement into Electrical Energy.
In drawings which illustrate embodiments of the invention:

The number 1 represents moving part of the road.
The number 2 represents the rubber sheet.
The number 3 represents the crankshaft with pulleys separated by 90 degrees.
The number 4 represents the traffic / mass / vehicles.
The number 5 represents the exit gear of the crankshaft with or without ratchet.
The number 6 represents the arm that is connected between the articulation and the moving part of the road.
The number 7 represents the arm that is connected between the articulation and the crankshaft.
The number 8 represents the articulation.
The number 9 represents a DC Alternator The number 10 represents the DC bus that could be at any DC Voltage.
The number 11 represents the DC-AC Drive that will allow us to connect to the utility grid at the right frequency, voltage and phase.
The number 12 represents a AC Bus that could be at any voltage, since we can pass it through a transformer to connect to the utility grid.

Figure 1 is a side view of the Hill Generator with 4 gravitational / inertial motors in series, Figure 2 is a front view of the Hill Generator (1 lane model ) showing 2 decelerating tracks with their respective gravitational / inertial motors, Figure 3 is a top view of the Hill Generator (1 lane model ) showing 4 sections of two decelerating tracks and the four gravitational motors per track Figure 4 is an electrical diagram showing the general functioning of the Hill Generator.

In figure 1, you see the side view of the Hill Generator that creates the equivalent of an hill ( or a sine wave ) that runs away from the vehicles, with the vehicles. As you can see, the crankshaft is coupled to 5 moving road segments, each separated by 90 degrees. More or less, a 4 cylinder set up with 5 cylinders, to make sure that the rest position is with the first cylinder completely depressed.
We could have made it with any other configuration, as soon as we take the inertia problem into consideration.

In figure 2, you see a front view of the device, if it was cut at the beginning of the Hill Generator.
You see the gravitational motors that are used to decelerate vehicles in each of the decelerating tracks. This model is a single lane model with 2 decelerating tracks. There could be other models where the decelerating tracks will be as wide as the lane.

In figure 3, you have a top view of 4 sections of Hill Generator. Each section consists in 2 decelerating tracks and 4 gravitational motors per decelerating tracks. We could have put any other configurations, including but not limited to putting asphalts between sections or changing the number of gravitational motors per sections or simply, changing the number of pistons per gravitational motor.

In figure 4, you have the electrical single line diagram of the Hill Generator. As you might have understood, this model is made with DC Alternator. However, it is also possible to generate with any other electrical arrangement. For this particular case, it is easy to put as many alternator as we wish in series. The only precautions are to " electrically " isolate the base of alternator as well as use a rubber strap to drive the generator, so that it is electrically isolated at the shaft also.

The preferred applications for the single lane model would be in a big city, in a one way road, single lane, with a lot of traffic, before a stop, on a 50 km/h zone ( or 30 mph ).
Assuming that there is a regular traffic at this location, we expect to recuperate 300 MWh per year in lost energy. This has a different value depending of the tariff where these savings are generated.

Indeed, the energy contained in a vehicles could be Kinetic of Potential. The Kinetic energy will be defined by half the mass ( in kg ) times the speed squared ( in m/s ). The Potential Energy is defined by the loss of altitude ( in m) times the gravitational force ( in m/s2) times the vehicles mass ( in kg ). Once we know the traffic at a particular location, it is very straightforward to determine the quantity of energy that we can recuperate from vehicles. Then, the economical analysis is easy to do.

This form of electrical generation / recuperation is more useful than other existing alternative forms of generation ( like wind farms for example ) in the sense that it will have a better availability and predictability because it is dependant upon traffic in urban areas and this is well known and predictable. Also, one can easily imagine the quantity of energy contained in a traffic period in Los Angeles, New York, etc... ! The other fact is that the loss of energy of moving vehicles is free and we save the brakes of the vehicles when we recuperate the lost energy ! From an environmental perspective, this is a good project since there is no negative impact on environment.

Another advantage of this invention is that it could be built remotely and have a modular installation. Due to that, it will easily be moved to other locations and very easy to maintain since we can remove a module and replace it with another one while we do maintenance work !

It is clear that this invention will have to take advantage of the trucks that go down the hills or decelerate, although cars, airplanes, bus and subways will be good targets too.

There are no patents on this to the best of my knowledge and after I made several searches.
However, the techniques of generation of electricity are well known and none looks like this one but they are not equivalent or anything like that. All I have seen up to now are generation techniques with recuperation systems perpendicular to the traffic direction. All these recuperation systems will create vibrations or not collect enough energy.

I have never given away any information about the subject of this invention other than to say to some of my friends that I found a way to generate electricity with gravity and that I was trying to obtain a patent for this idea.

Finally, it is my intent to patent this invention in the maximum countries as possible.

Claims (2)

1. Claim 1 A Hill Generator converting vehicle kinetic energy into rotational energy by creating subsequent artificial hills, which comprises more than one vertically moving road segments, to be thought as pistons and coupled by the mean of real pistons to a crankshaft that is parallel to the traffic direction and producing rotation in discrete steps when vehicles pass on the moving road segments of the said bridge.
2. Claim 2 A Hill Generator converting vehicle kinetic energy into electrical energy by creating subsequent artificial hills, which comprises more than one vertically moving road segments, to be thought as pistons and coupled by the mean of real pistons to a crankshaft that is parallel to the traffic direction and producing rotation in discrete steps that are converted in electrical energy by the mean of a technology based on Faraday's law of induction.