Autostrade per l’Italia is a company that manages motorways in Italy: in this context, it is constantly looking for technological solutions for the sustainable development and management of the Italian motorway network.

This is how the project was born “Collection of kinetic energy from vehicles” (KEHV) : his ambition is to run a toll booth on a motorway or illuminate a service station, thanks tokinetic energy generated by the passage of motor vehicles on the highway.

Kinetic energy on highways: a world first

The solution developed by Movyon, the research and innovation center of the Autostrade per l’Italia group, uses technology capable of convert the kinetic energy of vehicles into decelerationis usually lost as heat through the brakes into electrical energy.

For the first time in the world, the experiment was carried out in real conditions, in Tuscany, in the Arno-Est service area on the Italian A1 motorway, then the tests will continue in the coming months on a dual carriageway.

Autostrade per l’Italia aims to create a platform capable of producing clean energy in addition to photovoltaics. According to preliminary estimates, due to the daily passage of 9 thousand vehicles, one module is capable to produce 30 MWh every year, which corresponds to the annual electricity consumption of 10 houses. The idea is to make toll stations energy-dangerous : for example, the Florence West Freeway barrier consumes about 60 MWh of electricity per year. By simply installing two modules, it will be possible to provide enough electricity to cover all the energy needs of the station.

Revolutionary system

The KEHV project is based on the LYBRA system developed by the startup 20energy. In practice, each vehicle that passes through the module activates a electromechanical generatorwhich allows it to recover its kinetic energy:electrical energy the material obtained in this way becomes usable thanks to an electronic converter that allows it to be connected to the network.

In the service area, for example, the energy produced by this revolutionary system can be used to power lighting, billboards and even power charging stations for electric vehicles. The energy generated at the toll collection point can be used to power the entire toll collection system (toll points, barriers and lighting).

In practice, according to Movyon’s estimates, the Milan North and Milan South tollbooths register a daily traffic of around 8,000 heavy goods vehicles and 63,000 light vehicles: KEHV systems installed on the various toll lanes can generate more than 200 MWh . every year, and that’s at each of the toll gates that would allowsave about 70 tons of CO2/year.

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