Categories
Inventions kids observations

Energy Efficient Escalator

My soon-to-be seven-year old son, Chase, has always been fascinated with the escalators at the downtown Wells Fargo Bank Building (what kid isn’t?). But he’s concerned about the fact that they are always running – “wasting power”, as he puts it – even when people aren’t using them. His invention: a motion-activated escalator that would power up or down when someone walks by the sensors at either end. There would obviously be a point in the day when it would run continuously, but think of the “down-times” when no one is using it. I thought it was a pretty clever idea. I’m no mechanical engineer, but I’m guessing there would likely be some logistic wrinkles to iron out. I figure if they can do it with lights, it wouldn’t be so far off for escalators. Now if we could just get our budding young conservative to take shorter showers.

5 replies on “Energy Efficient Escalator”

I have seen them in Belgium. Most specifically in the European Union complex. It was pretty weird to walk up to the escalator and have it turn on. I hope your son can encourage folks who are involved in new construction to put these types of escalators in their buildings.

The best thing about an escalator, is it can never be broken. If it’s not in working order, it’s still stairs!!

Leave a Reply to thorens Cancel reply

%d bloggers like this: