As anyone living near railway tracks will tell you, speeding trains generate quite a bit of wind as they whoosh past.
Industrial designers Qian Jiang and Alessandro Leonetti Luparini have come up with a device that’s installed between the sleepers on a track, and as the train passes overhead, the wind drives a turbine to generate electricity. The T-box devices could be placed along railway or subway lines, and make good use of an otherwise wasted resource.
Unlike innovations such as the Solar Roadways project and Solar Wind concept, the T-box device wouldn’t have to depend on a natural energy source, but instead one that is produced as a consequence of human activity. China’s Jiang and Italy’s Luparini reckon that about 150 of these devices could be installed along a kilometer (0.62 miles) of track and as a train speeds along, the turbines inside the device would generate electricity.