Human-powered small-scale generation system for a sustainable dance club

Most human powered energy harvesting systems are used to power ubiquitously deployed sensor networks and mobile electronics. These systems scavenge power from human activity or derive limited energy from ambient heat, light, or vibrations. In most of these conventional methods users must focus their attention on power generation at the expense of other activities. However, for sustainable electrical power generation, energy could be harvested from everyday activities such as walking, running or even dancing. In this paper systems are analyzed that use human power by walking, or running, where an alternative system has been designed and implemented that generates energy from people dancing in a club environment. It will be shown that power's exceeding walking can be extracted from the system, i.e., maximum 80–100 W or an average of 20–30 W over a time period of 10 s.