Alternative Fuels Now

There’s a new way of wiring your lights…and it doesn’t involve wires. Pretty freakin’ cool actually. Right now, your light switch has a physical connection to your light. When you flip the switch, a circuit is completed and the light turns on.

But connecting every light to every light switch basically requires twice as much wiring for a house’s lighting system. That’s just dumb.

Since the advent of remote control, people have been trying to figure out a way to have a light switch turn a light on and off without having to be physically connected to the light. Unfortunately, this has always required some kind of battery (to power the remote) and that battery would invariably die.

But now, EnOcean (a company that specializes in pulling power from ambient sources) has figured out a way to have the light switch be powered by you.

Every time you flip the switch, a tiny generator creates a tiny charge. That tiny charge powers a tiny remote control that sends out a tiny signal that can be received by the light. All from the “power” of your flipping. Pretty cool.

The first adopters of the technology will be folks looking to retrofit old (possibly historically significant) buildings. But peel-and-stick, no-wiring-needed electronics are needed everywhere…and having them be self-powering is a true green innovation.

Via GreenLight