From the time you wake up in the morning to eating, walking, even sitting at a desk, you are generating energy. What if we could harness and harvest our actions, turn our comings and goings into an unconscious power plant? In my thesis, I am exploring the potential these mundane actions have to produce the electricity for the low power devices that supplement our lifestyles. My first investigation is focused on doors. In an office building of just 2,000 workers (like Tisch) entry doors are opened at least 6 times a day, 12,000 times. I have created a prototype for an add-on for hinged doors that generates electricity each time it is opened and closed. There is a mechanism to store this electricity, measure what is produced over time, save that data on a sever and then be able to dynamically graph and monitor its progress from a website. The stored electricity can then be used for any of the buildings off grid needs, such as emergency sign-age, security cameras or lighting.

With the fast developing technology, electronic appliances have become and continuing to be more widely used in our lives. One of the consequences of having many appliances is the significant amount of energy wasted while they are not being used. The excess usage is caused by the phantom loads and users’ negligent behavior. Studies show that standby power alone accounts for 5 to 15 percent of the electricity wasted in our homes

Smart Outlets aim to help people live a greener lifestyle by helping them conserve energy. The system is automated to kill power at the outlet level when it detects a device has gone to standby mode. The outlets are also wirelessly networked to cut off unneeded electric flow when a household leaves home and to enable future implementation of remote controlling over the internet. The prototype comprises one power strip of 2 regular and 5 controlled outlets, one controlled single socket, a key hook unit that acts as kill switch activated when the last person leaves home and possibly an ethernet module to enable managing the system over the internet.