maassluis, nl: four years ago, in the creative city of rotterdam, the idea of sustainable dance club was born.<\/p>\n
the concept emerged when the creative minds of enviu, a sustainable organization located in rotterdam, d\u00f6ll, a dutch architectural firm, and michel smit, former director of the club off_corso, joined forces with the mission to make partying on planet earth — just a little bit cleaner.<\/p>\n
\u201cit all started as a project for a club in rotterdam where they wanted to organize a sustainable party\u2026during one of the initial brainstorming sessions all kinds of ideas were \u2013 uh \u2013 stormed, and one of the ideas was to use the energy of the people inside the club\u2026different kinds of angles were launched there\u2026 and somebody else came up with the idea of using the kinetic energy of moving and dancing people and to maybe convert that energy into electricity. that\u2019s how the idea of the sustainable dance floor was actually born,\u201d said commercial director of sdc, jaap van den braak, in an interview at the sdc\u2019s engineering center.<\/p>\n
how does the sustainable dance floor work?<\/p>\n
\u201cthe floor is being lowered a little bit, like ten millimeters. that energy is enough for the internal mechanism to get a high velocity speed at the generator and that generator is then, of course, producing electrical energy. so what we do is transform human mechanical energy into electrical energy,\u201d said eric van duin, sdc\u2019s head engineer.<\/p>\n
duin explained that this electrical energy could be used to power just about anything \u2013 in this case the led lights of the floor and small audio systems. the amount of energy generated depends on the number of people, size of the floor, and what the people are doing. for example, the energy is less when people are just moving or dancing as opposed to when there is a large group of people jumping on the floor.<\/p>\n
the floor itself is broken down in modules with the minimum rental at four modules. on average, van duin explains, one module can produce 15 watts, though peak levels reach up to 35 watts.<\/p>\n
what is the cost to rent a sustainable dance floor?<\/p>\n
\u201cwhat we didn\u2019t really expect at the beginning is that our system was that expensive that many nightclubs couldn\u2019t afford it,\u201d said van den braak of the cost of the sustainable dance floor.<\/p>\n
\u201cespecially over the last few years where investing heavily in new technology and sustainability was just not a priority\u2026because times were just difficult for nightlife\u2026so that was a bit of a bummer for us of course, on the other hand, we adjusted by seeing an immense opportunity in the event field\u2026so not installing the dance floor long term, but temporary installments for all kinds of events worldwide.\u201d<\/p>\n
cost to rent a sustainable dance floor is broken down by single modules, per day. one module costs 60 euro per day, with the minimum rental being four modules. the contract sum depends on where the event is being held (cost to transport the dance floor) in addition to the size of the dance floor.<\/p>\n
sustainable dance club saw their biggest success with a club in rotterdam called club watt where the dance floor was installed. unfortunately, in the past year watt closed down due to financial issues unrelated to sdc.<\/p>\n
\u201cwe had no influence on the daily operations of the nightclub\u2026unfortunately for us, because we connected our name to it [watt] that\u2019s where a lot of misunderstandings came from. a lot of people and a lot of companies thought that we were actually closing down, but it was the nightclub that closed down and we were still continuing what we were doing,\u201d said van den braak.<\/p>\n
as a result of many clubs in the area being unable to afford sdc\u2019s dance floors, many installations were being rented for corporate events and showcased in other venues across the world:<\/p>\n
\u201cinstallations are being done mainly in museums these days. so the high-tech, innovative, sustainable solution is very educational for the people that go to the museums and especially to science centers where younger people come and they are being explained to how difficult it is to generate power. because if our system shows one thing it is that it is really tough to generate a lot of power just by dancing and jumping up and down,\u201d said van den braak.<\/p>\n
two of these museum exhibits include u.s. locations in philadelphia, pennsylvania and miami, florida. sdc also houses some of their technology in a science center in australia and is currently working on bringing their work to trinidad and berlin.<\/p>\n
what is the future of sdc?<\/p>\n
sdc reached for the clubs and landed in corporate events and museums, but that wasn\u2019t enough to deter these ambitious tree-huggers all together. in the near future, sdc plans to work on improving the technology of their sustainable energy floor, a product modeled after the sustainable dance floor though with the mission of being more affordable.<\/p>\n
meanwhile, sdc will continue to rent their floors out to corporate events and other venues, while working on new technology to expand into other popular arenas as well:<\/p>\n
\u201cwe see our future is right now at a place where it can go into different directions\u2026so, renting out the system to parties, festivals, corporate clients et cetera but also to purchase it in all different kinds of venues\u2026one other thing that we are also looking into right now is implementing our technology in gyms so when you\u2019re looking at [university] fitness [centers] we would love to see our product in that kind of atmosphere\u2026so people generating electricity while they\u2019re doing a workout. it\u2019s one of the fields that we\u2019re focusing on right now,\u201d said van den braak.<\/p>\n
clubs, festivals, gyms \u2013 sustainable dance club is determined to use their technology to make for a cleaner planet. for more information about sustainable dance club or project helder visit their websites at: http:\/\/www.sustainabledanceclub.com\/ and http:\/\/projecthelder.nl\/2011\/project_helder___film.html.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
now here’s a money maker: shake it and power this sustainable dance floor!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8796,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4893,4898,4900],"tags":[],"storyfest_categories":[],"class_list":["post-13917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-engineering","category-green-living"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n