In Focus: Energy Floors - Capturing The Energy Of The Crowd
Energy Floors are aiding sustainability by changing the narrative around fan engagement. fcbusiness speaks to CEO, Michel Smit, to find out how they are doing this.
Every club thinks their fans are the loudest, but what if there was a way of telling whose fans are creating the most energy and being able to harness that to power the stadium?
As football aims to be more sustainable and look for more efficient means of energy production and usage, one company is using the power generated by fans to help meet these needs and consumption demands whilst developing a new and unique fan engagement narrative.
Based in the Netherlands, Energy Floors have been capturing and transferring the power of footsteps for the last 15 years. Their unique and patented energy capture mechanism means that any club can now capture and create sustainable energy from their fans in the stadium who are then more engaged, creating a unique experience while watching the game.
Kinetic Energy
As human beings we are constantly producing energy, or more specifically – Kinetic Energy. This energy is created from movement and motion – and people create more of this energy when they walk, run, jump or dance.
Michel Smit, CEO of Energy Floors, explains how it works. He said: “You can look at the usual sources of renewable energy like solar, or wind etc. But what makes this unique for a place where a lot of people come together is the energy of the crowd.
“You see that in a nightclub, you see it at a festival, but you also see it in a football stadium. The energy of the people is so unique and so important that we have found a way to convert that energy into usable electricity.
“When people are moving, they are moving their body mass and the movement of mass creates kinetic energy. If a person is walking, or running, or jumping this movement has a certain energy.”
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Power from the People
So how can this energy be utilised in the football stadium environment? Smit, further explains: “Our Energy Floors should be in a place where there are lots of people moving, they should also be highly visible because kinetic energy is a unique type of energy and we want to show the results of what is being created.
“There are two ideal places. One is the entrance and exits to a stadium because those are narrow spaces that everyone has to go through, they have the highest footfall.
“The second place is in front of the seats. When fans are jumping and cheering for their team that’s what generates the most energy. We have these visions of full stadiums where people are jumping when a goal is scored. That’s what generates the most power.”
Fan Engagement
With the soaring cost of energy and club’s looking to enhance their sustainable credentials, Energy Floors is providing an effective way of generating enough energy to take some of the pressure from a stadium’s energy infrastructure.
“A footstep of a grown-up person can create about 2 watts of energy. So, if you have 100,000 steps across the floor, then that’s producing around 200,000w of energy. If fans are jumping, then it’s going to go up to 20 watts per tile per person.
“In addition, we can also provide a wealth of information about the way fans interact with the floors. We can measure which part of the stadium, or which side of the fans are generating the most energy.
“We can see if a goal that was scored in the 10th minute created more energy than say a goal scored in the 87th minute. We can create energy and data dashboards from the people in the stadium.
“This then provides a new narrative around sustainability. Instead of saying to fans ‘you should not consume this’, or ‘you cannot do this anymore’, we’re turning it around and saying: ‘by doing this you can create energy’.
“The greatest value of this kinetic energy is the engagement of the people. They think ‘wow, there’s other ways of making energy and if we all work together, we can really make a change’. We make that tangible and show that they can create enough energy to power something. There then becomes an energy competition element and that is really valuable.”
