Bill Finds An Unlikely Renewable Energy Source: Non-Hybrid Vehicles

Assemblyman Mike Gatto has introduced AB 306, the Roadway / Highway Electrification Act pilot. As of press time, the Sierra Club has taken no official position on it, but may be reviewing it in the coming months.

The new bill proposes California invest in 'piezoelectric generation,' to capture the energy lost as traditional automobiles move along a stretch of pavement and place that power into the electrical grid. While hybrid vehicles capture the energy lost while slowing down a vehicle and use that energy to power the car independently from the engine for significant stretches of time, for the many non-hyrbrids on the road, that energy is wasted.

Piezoelectric generation can produce as much as 44 megawatts of electricity per year from one single-lane, one-kilometer stretch of roadway -- enough to power 30,800 homes for a year. The science works as follows: When a car or truck passes over pavement, the pavement vibrates ever so slightly. (You can feel these vibrations if you have ever stood on a road as a truck speeds by.) By placing relatively inexpensive piezoelectric sensors underneath a road, the vibrations produced by vehicles can be converted into electricity, which can be used to power roadside lights, call boxes, and neighboring communities. Identical technology has already been placed underneath highways in Israel, and Italy has signed a contract to place the technology under a stretch of the Venice-to-Trieste Autostrada. The technology can be placed under asphalt during regularly scheduled repaving, and does not affect the vehicles traveling on the road, in terms of 'road feel', fuel efficiency, or emissions.

The bill would require Caltrans to use existing funds (already set aside by AB 118, Chapter 750, Statutes of 2007) to run two pilot projects with the new piezoelectric technology, one in Northern California and one in Southern California.