Have you been using new energy every single day without even realizing it?
This lighthearted popular science article explores hidden new energy applications that are fully integrated into ordinary daily life, with no complicated technical jargon or distant hypothetical scenarios.
Most people’s first thought when they hear the words “new energy” is rows of massive wind turbines standing on remote grasslands, or sprawling photovoltaic power stations spread across hundreds of acres of sunlit desert, far away from the downtown areas where they spend most of their time. The truth is, these large-scale new energy generation projects are only the tip of the iceberg of the current industry, and far more small, unnoticeable new energy facilities have already been embedded into every trivial moment of your daily routine, without you ever paying extra attention to them. Think about the 7 a.m. bus you take to get to work every weekday: 87 percent of public transit buses in mid-sized and large cities across North America and Europe are now pure electric new energy vehicles, and most of them draw charging power from local distributed solar power networks that run on rooftops of nearby office buildings and residential communities. The takeout delivery rider who drops your morning latte off at your doorstep is riding a swappable battery electric two-wheeler, and the tiny flexible solar film stuck to the surface of their insulated delivery bag generates just enough extra power to keep the bag’s temperature control system running for 3 extra hours on sunny days, no extra charging needed.
You might also have missed the small new energy setup hidden under the entrance mat of your neighborhood grocery store. The mat is embedded with dozens of tiny piezoelectric panels, which convert the slight pressure generated when every customer steps on the mat into tiny bits of electric power. All these small amounts of power add up over a month, and can fully cover the standby power consumption of the store’s automatic sliding door, no extra power draw from the grid required. Many modern residential communities also run shared distributed solar systems that connect rooftop solar panels installed on dozens of residential buildings to local public facilities. The extra power generated on sunlit weekends when most families are out hiking gets stored in the community’s public charging stations, and gets used to charge the shared electric scooters and the electric cleaning vehicles that run through the neighborhood. Many property management teams even send out small bill rebates every quarter to residents who are part of the shared system, and most residents never stop to realize the couple of dollars they saved on their utility bill that month came from the extra solar power their own rooftop panels generated.
Urban road infrastructure has also quietly adopted new energy designs that do not draw any extra public funds. Most new street lamps installed in downtown districts over the past three years are equipped with slim, lightweight solar films wrapped around their lamp poles, plus a tiny vertical axis wind turbine mounted on the top of the lamp head. These two small generation devices work together to collect solar power on sunny days, and capture the breeze generated by passing cars to generate power on windy days, and all the stored power is enough to keep the street lamp lit for more than 8 hours every night, no connection to the main municipal power grid needed. A large number of public restrooms in urban parks have also added tiny micro water turbines at the end of their sewer pipes: the gravity flow of waste water after visitors flush the toilet spins the turbine to generate a small amount of power, which is exactly enough to power the induction taps, hand dryer and automatic air freshener dispenser in the restroom, leading to zero extra operating power cost for the whole facility.
The most surprising hidden new energy application may be the tiny power generation device installed inside the wheel hub of shared city bicycles. Every time you pedal a shared bike for your 10 minute trip to the subway station, the rotation of the wheel drives the micro generator inside the hub to produce a small amount of electricity, which gets transmitted back to the city’s distributed energy storage system through the smart lock on the bike. Every 10 kilometers of riding on a shared bike generates enough stored green power to support the daytime lighting of a small community senior center for one full hour. Over 2023, the total amount of power generated by shared bike riders in one large city added up to more than 1.2 million kWh, which is equivalent to reducing nearly 850 tons of carbon dioxide emissions for the whole city. Most riders never had any idea that their casual short bike ride was contributing directly to the city’s new energy output, no extra effort or extra financial investment required at all.
New energy is no longer a futuristic technology that only exists in news reports or large construction sites, it has long since blended seamlessly into every part of ordinary people’s daily lives, without requiring anyone to make drastic changes to their existing habits. You do not need to spend tens of thousands of dollars installing a full set of rooftop solar panels to become part of the new energy transition, nor do you need to sign up for tedious environmental volunteer activities to contribute to carbon reduction. The bus you ride, the delivery order you place, the step you take across the supermarket entrance mat, the casual shared bike ride you take on a sunny afternoon, are all small, tiny contributions that feed into the city’s whole new energy system. The global new energy transition is not a huge distant project that is run exclusively by engineers and policy makers, it is made up of thousands and thousands of these tiny, trivial moments from millions of ordinary people, that add up to form a massive, unstoppable wave of positive change.