California considers using high-traffic roads to produce electricity

All those cars on California's famously gridlocked highways could be doing more than using energy. They could be producing it. The California Energy Commission is investing 2 million to study whether piezoelectric crystals can be used to produce electricity from the mechanical energy created by vehicles driving on roads. The commission is choosing a company or university to take on small-scale field tests. It will study how the small crystals, which generate energy when compressed, could produce electricity for the grid if installed under asphalt.