An invention I should have pursued further

Last year, I began pursuing an idea with a good friend of mine. We met with one of our extremely talented professors, Giri Venkataramanan, and began developing mathematical equations to turn our idea into a reality. Well, we stopped pursuing the idea due to a simple lack of free time, and sure enough, the idea has surfaced and is now in production.

“Terry Kenney’s Dragon Power Station prototype works by harnessing the kinetic energy of trucks passing over plates buried in the road and turning that energy into electricity.

– Jason Chen, Gizmodo.com

Even one of the comments made, expresses the same thought process we encountered.

“@ludwigk: It’s a great idea though if done as already noted by NOT lowering your fuel economy. If they placed this on, say, every interstate off-ramp. Everyone needs to slow down anyways. Lots of traffic. It’s not going to hurt your fuel efficiency if you’re already trying to stop. all it will do is save you some wear and tear on your brakes. Granted, it’s probably not generating as much power as that article initially claims, but still…every bit counts.”

But if anything good comes from this, it is this: Validation. (Andy M taught me this)

The fact that this idea was developed, and is in production, validates our initial pursuit of invention.

Maybe next time.

An invention I should have pursued further Read More »