Q-Park Thesis award for Jurriaan Coomans
TPM graduate Jurriaan Coomans won the Ward Vleugels Q-Park Thesis Award for his thesis ‘Car Park as a Power Plant’. This thesis looks further into the future than using the battery capacity of parked electric cars to flatten peaks in energy demand. If hydrogen technology for fueling passenger cars develops into viable vehicles, this will offer opportunities to use parking facilities as power plants.
Hydrogen car
The hydrogen car generates electricity from hydrogen, which powers the car. When a hydrogen engine is running, the only waste is water, which means that you can leave the engine running when parked. A modern wind turbine has about the same capacity as approximately 25 passenger cars. The advantage of the cars is that they can also generate electricity if there is no wind. If you leave the engine running while parked at home, you will have your own electricity generator, (and more than likely, you'll be at home to consume that electricity). If a car is parked at home for half the time, (4,000 hours per annum), only 15 cars will be needed to generate as much electricity as a wind turbine.