From Pat Morrisey
Your article proposes that we should scavenge some of the wasted energy from our environment to power devices like microprocessors and mobile phones (3 August, p 36).
I’m all for that, but surely it would be more energy efficient and profitable, not to mention environmentally friendly, to avoid creating excess energy in the first place? Improvements to appliance design could reduce the amount of sound and stray electromagnetic radiation produced.
If that didn’t prove economical, then perhaps the energy harvesters could be built directly into the devices (car engines, industrial machinery, air-conditioning vents and kitchen appliances, to name but a few). Sound energy decreases with the square of the distance, as does electromagnetic radiation, so it makes sense to locate the harvester as close as possible to the source.
Bray, County Wicklow
