One of the few credible reports of scavenged power I have seen in the wild. This is trying to solve the same problem as Josh Smith at Intel Research Seattle.

Tokyomango: Commuter-generated electricity. JR East's new experiment consists of energy-generators under ticket wickets, a milliwatt-tracking counter, and 700,000 daily commuters. For the next two months, the railway company will be using using the vibrations of human foosteps at Tokyo Station to generate up to 100 milliwatts per second per person that walks through. The idea is to be able to generate enough electricity to power the wickets themselves and their display panels regularly.