Developing and Using Speed Humps for Power Generation in Nablus City
Date
2020
Authors
Aya Aqhash
Aya Rahhal
Islam Koa
Wesam Rabaya
Journal Title
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Abstract
Nablus is one of the largest Palestinian cities, it has a unique location that plays an important
role in making Nablus vital commercial. In the recent years, the city has witnessed expanded in
the residential and commercial areas, significant increase in the amount of traffic population,
and the demand for basic services such as electricity.
Electricity in one of the most important innovations that makes our life easier. It is used in our
daily life. There are many sources that are used to generate the electricity, such as fossil fuel,
solar energy, etc. Nablus city suffers from many problems in the electricity sector in light of
the political issues especially as it gets a high percentage of its electricity needs from Israeli’s
occupation. In this project, the possibility of harvesting electric energy from the traffic of
vehicle on speed humps will be studied for Nablus city. The study will introduce an eco-friendly
speed hump.
The methodology in this project includes; collect traffic data such as the coordinates of speed
humps in the city using GPS devices. Next, use these coordinates to create a GIS map using
ArcGIS software. In addition, the traffic volume counts were conducted in the city streets in
order to determine the amount of electricity that can be harvested through the speed humps.
Then, an electric speed bump design was developed in order to determine the energy and
environmental impacts of electrical speed bump in the future. For this purpose, an economic
and environmental feasibility analysis was conducted.
The results have showed that this could save NIS 742073 of energy consumed costs in street
lightening and traffic signals during one year. More specifically, this number is almost equal to
44.66% of energy consumed annually in Nablus city for street lighting. Moreover, the payback
period and the number of profits within 20 years are 15.5 years and NIS 4 million, respectively.
However, if the project can be implemented on streets on which the flow is high, which is 14.1%
of the total humps and 38% of the required energy could be produced. Also, the payback period
and the number of profits within 20 years are 3.1 years and NIS 5.4 million, respectively.
Furthermore, significant amounts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions could be reduced, as a
result of reduced electricity production from fuel.