Turning the noise of fans in a stadium into electricity?

As the global energy transition becomes a priority, a high school student from Louisiana, Gyeongyun Lily Min, may have discovered a new source of renewable energy: the cheers of fans in sports stadiums.

Inspired by the animated film Monsters, Inc., 17-year-old Gyeongyun Lily Min decided to explore the potential of piezoelectricity to convert noise into electricity.


Piezoelectricity is a known phenomenon where certain materials generate an electrical charge when subjected to vibrations or pressures. This technology has been used on a small scale before, such as from 2008 to 2009 at the Shibuya train station in Tokyo, where a piezoelectric mat produced a few watts of electricity by absorbing the footsteps of travelers. However, Gyeongyun Lily Min envisions applying this principle on a much larger scale.

The young inventor's idea is simple: capture the sound waves generated by fans in a stadium to produce electricity. To test her concept, she built a miniature model of a stadium equipped with piezoelectric generators. By simulating the noise of the crowd with sounds ranging from 70 to 100 decibels, she successfully generated a few milliwatts of electricity—a modest yet encouraging result.

Gyeongyun Lily Min acknowledges that her experiment was limited by the quality of the available materials, but she remains convinced that improving piezoelectric devices and their strategic deployment could open new avenues for sustainable energy production. According to her, such a system, if implemented in a full-sized stadium, could not only power the stadium itself but also contribute to the energy needs of the surrounding neighborhood.

Gyeongyun's initiative has already caught the attention of engineers, who see potential in the project to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and lower greenhouse gas emissions. In a world where every watt counts, turning fan cheers into renewable energy could become a reality.