The purpose of methodology is to explain all the calculations and assumptions in our kinetic tile project at the University of Houston.

Each kinetic tile covers an area of 0.1083 m2 and approximately costs around USD 211 per tile. We have decided to use these tiles on the most heavily populated areas of the university campus which is approximately an area of 261.44m2. Each tile approximately generates 5W per step and has a durability life of anywhere between five and twenty years with proper maintenance. We prefer to use a flywheel for the storage of this energy which additionally costs around USD 197,600 and has a durability life of 20 years.

In order to use these kinetic tiles effectively, we’ve placed them in five most frequented areas of our campus. The first one includes the two main entrances of the Student Center. As per a statistical average, this location is usually frequented by 15,000 people each working day. The second location is the library which is usually one of the most crowded place on campus and is usually visited by 15,000 people every working day. The third and fourth locations are in the recreation center. An estimated 1300 people walk through the entrance of the recreation center each day which is our third location. Our fourth location is the running tracks which is used by approximately 500 people in a working day. Our final location is an alley way between the Central plant and the library. There is very heavy foot traffic at all times of the day here and it is estimated to be around 5000 people walking through here every working day.

By manually calculating the area of each location we have calculated the number of tiles that are needed at all five locations. According to the area of each location, we have calculated the number of tiles to be 1935 kinetic tiles in total. By the help of university’s statistics, we have estimated the number of people walking through each of our locations to be 36,800 and assuming that each person steps on at least 2 tiles in a day we have a total of 73,600 steps. These steps produce a total energy of 368,000W and assuming a 5% energy usage we have a total of 349,600W of energy storage. This is based on the assumption that no energy is lost during storage.

Using an average energy cost of 0.1094 $/kWh, assuming the energy cost remains the same, we estimated the amount of money saved by the energy produced per day in our five locations. According to our calculation we save an amount of USD 917.90 per day. Assuming no cost deductions, this turns out to be an annual saving of 146,865.60$. Taking into account the total cost of the tiles (assuming the tiles need to be replaced every 5 years) and the flywheel along with the maintenance of each over twenty years, the total amount of savings will be USD 40,885.99. These savings are with the assumptions that a year only consist of two semesters, each four months long and also that power is mainly generated only 5 days a week. We also assume that the installation and shipping costs are included in the tile cost. We have taken a fair estimation for the maintenance cost of the whole system to be about $1200 per month. All these estimations and assumptions have been explicitly taken into account in our calculation procedures.