Innowattech starts new pilot to harvest power from trains

Having already begun its pilot test of technology to produce electricity from moving cars, startup Innowattech is moving onto trains. Yesterday the company, in collaboration with the Technion University and Israel Railways, began a new pilot to produce electricity from the railways.

For the pilot, near the station at Lod, the "energy harvesting" startup installed standard rail tracks into which it integrated its unique power generators. The generators are made of piezoelectric materials that "harvest" mechanical strain - created when a car moves on the road or when a train moves on the track - and convert it into electrical power.

The Innowattech Piezo Electric Generator, as the company calls it, exists in different versions for pedestrians, roads, trains and even airplanes.

Company CEO and co-founder Haim Abramovich said the amount of energy produced from the train technology system will depend on rail traffic per hour.

Experience around the world indicates that, roughly speaking, the passage of 10-20 trains per hour, with an average of 10 cars each, would produce enough to power about 150 households.

As far as Israel goes, there is track segment between Tel Aviv and Netanya that sees that kind of traffic.

Israel Railways CEO Yitzhak Harel said the partnership between Israel Railways and Innowattech was natural. "The train is a 'green' transport mechanism, that helps reduce emissions," he said. "The number of people traveling on one train is equivalent to the number of people in 323 air-polluting cars."

Two months ago Innowattech, the Technion and the National Roads Company (Maatz) began a pilot to produce electricity at the Hefer intersection on Route 4.

If the pilot is successful, the project is expected to be expanded. The startup's breakthrough generators will be situated in one-kilometer strips along Israel's highways.

Project manager Lucy Edery-Azulay said that electricity is produced by converting mechanical energy, created by the loads and traveling speed of the train as it travels over the piezoelectric generators, into electricity. Conversion of mechanical energy into electricity is nothing new, but it's normally done using turbines.

In the road system, the Innowattech generators, which look like tiles, are embedded about five centimeters beneath the top layer of asphalt. It makes no difference to drivers, she says.

Innowattech was founded in 2007. It is controlled by a foreign resident. So far about $3.5 million has been invested in the company, industry sources say.