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China

Passengers who are accustomed to waiting for a train on the platform know the whoosh of wind when it finally arrives. In China, home of one of the world's largest high-speed rail networks, designers Jiang Qian and Alessandro Leonetti Luparini are trying to make use of all those gusts. Their prototype creation is called the T-box, a small power generator. Each cylindrical T-box houses a wind turbine that spins to produce power, and a swath of T-Boxes would be embedded between the railroad ties to catch the wind from the train rushing overhead. They would then send the energy created to an electrical storage device, and then on to the grid. The designers say that 150 T-boxes, placed along less than a mile of railway tracks, could generate approximately 2.6 kilowatts of power (depending on the passing train's length and speed). That could help to provide electricity to remote areas along the railway route. T-Box took the silver medal at the 2010 Lite-On Awards, China's most prestigious recognition for industrial design.