A GROUP of young Bahraini government school students have come up with a home-grown green technology prototype that will not only generate electricity but make the kingdom’s roads safer.
The novel idea, which the team from Jidhafs Secondary Technical Boys School calls ‘Street Pump’, is a traffic calming measure which harnesses the kinetic residual power of a car as it goes over the hump and converts it into electric energy.
“This can be installed in place of a regular speed breaker and the weight of the car as it passes over it basically activates our mechanism built into the hump that creates electrical energy that can be used to power lights or transferred to a power bank for later use,” 17-year-old recent high school graduate Danial Ali told the GDN on the sidelines of the 15th Annual Young Entrepreneurs Competition, conducted by Injaz Bahrain at the Gulf Convention Centre.
In addition to Danial, the team, which won the Innovation Award at the competition earlier this week, is also comprised of Murtadha Jawad, 17, Ayman Alderazi, 17, Hamad Abdul Ghani, 17, Mustafa Al Alawi, 17, and Mujtaba Humaidan, 16.
Each block of the ‘Street Pump’ costs BD50 to construct and measures less than a metre across with approximately four of the units required to replace the average two-way speed bump found on inner-city streets.
According to the team, each block could generate 16W of power every hour based on average Bahraini traffic, with the full bump generating up to 64W of power per hour.
The team estimates that this translates to more than 23,000 watts of energy during the year, which can result in more than BD3,500 of energy cost savings annually against a BD200 initial investment.
“We have built our prototype and the underlying mechanism using recycled materials, like bicycle chains and old car motors, which further reduces the carbon footprint of the technology,” Murtadha added.
The team’s advisor Ahmed Zainal suggested that this could be installed outside drive-thru restaurants or in mall parking lots, with the electricity being used to reduce lighting energy costs, for example.
“Something like this has been implemented in Japan, and they used chains on the outside to turn a rotor and generate electricity, but we believe our solution improves on that by integrating all the moving parts under the hump,” Hamad added.
“We would love to partner with a local business or organisation that wants to implement the technology to test and further develop it.”
With each of the boys gearing up to start university both locally and abroad, they are hoping that a local business or entrepreneur takes the idea forward, with the boys joining their team during summer internships to further develop the concept.
In addition to Team Street Pump, students from nine other high schools and 10 universities participated in the Injaz Bahrain-organised competition, held under the patronage of Shaikha Hessa bint Khalifa Al Khalifa.
In addition to the coveted university and high school ‘Company of the Year 2023’ awards, this year, the competition included six signature awards, including ‘Best Booth and Brand’, ‘Innovation’, ‘Excellence in Technology’, ‘Excellence in ESG’, ‘Best Financial Performance Award’ and ‘Rising CEO Award’.
naman@gdnmedia.bh
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