Country: Italy
Category:Energy
Name: Veranu
Project Aim: new flooring solution able to generate clean energy and additional IoT services by simply walking on it.
What does Veranu mean?
Veranu is a Sardinian word that means “Spring” and it wants to represent the development of Sardinian ideas in Europe and around the world.
What os Veranu’s story?
The Veranu’s story started in the University of Cagliari, here were studied different piezoelectric materials that today are used to convert the kinetic energy of steps into electricity. These materials are contained inside a PLA (polylactic acid) box, a recycling plastic that derives from renewable resources, such as corn starch. The traditional floor ( i.e. ceramic tile, parquet, PVC or linoleum) will be integrate on the surface of PLA. In this way the clients have the benefit of invisible technology and at the same time the preferred surface floor.
How is it working?
Today there is not a technology that can provide data about the point to point movement of people but there are only technologies that can provide the number of people in one point. Veranu can detect, acquire and sell these data for marketing or logistics.
The size of the tile is 30x30x4 cm3 with the weight of 1 kg. Veranu will be waterproof and easy to install and to maintenance thanks to its modular structure.
The increase of CO2 emissions pushed us to develop a new technology that could be another small step throw a more sustainable society. Veranu can provide 2 J/step; a LED street light could be switched on with 20 steps and a smartphone battery could be recharged with 10.000 steps.
Installing a floor of 20 m2 with a 7 million people flow we forecast a payback of 3 years.
How is the project going?
Until now we developed two prototypes and in the 2017 we are planning the first demo installations in places with an high flow of people to test the real performance and show the product to the public.
We operate in the Energy harvesting market that is fast-growing and include all systems that generate clean energy by renewable sources. The energy harvesting system market is expected to grow and will be worth an estimated 974.4 Million USD by 2022 at a CAGR of 19.6% between 2016 and 2022.
Our team belong to the Erasmus generation, we travelled around Europe thanks Erasmus program, Erasmus young Entrepreneur and AEGEE. Europe and this award is an opportunity to meet other culture, points of view and create new synergies and relationships.
This European final represent a step forward for a Sardinia opened to Europe and the world.