Free energy gathered from our major highways

I just got off of the phone with my buddy Shannon and another idea cropped up...powering stop and street lights through alternative means. This power could come from a couple of sources, both solar and wind. Here's the idea:

• On overpasses or specially designed housings that are contructed on major, high-speed thoroughfares, have wind accumulating turbines, along with solar panels, that gather the kinetic wind energy produced by the passing vehicles. See the article for "German Patent DE 4232186" which describes the invention. If these types of devices were installed onto our cities major overpasses and along our major highways, they would gather a large amount of free energy, including both wind and solar. With this type of installation, it would gather more than enough energy to provide free "plug-ins" to power the near future release of both hybrid and electric-only "plug-in" vehicles at most major parking lots, including your place of employment. The abundance of energy could also be used to compensate for the power, paid by the municipalities, used for stop and street lights.
  

• I found an website for a company that has a hydraulic "carpet" system that gathers wasted kinetic energy from decelerating vehicles, though, it also assists in slowing the vehicle down. This system would be great near highly traveled "epicenters", such a highway exits and the like.

• Solar power plants: If Germany can do it, why can't we? I'm sure there are plenty of areas that we can utilize as Solar Parks. What about lining the roadways, medians, etc., with solar panels. Some people complain about the panels being unsightly, but if they're arranged in a tactful way, I bet they wouldn't even be noticed.
  
  The biggest problem is that there should definitely be a law passed to encompass all 50 states of America and its territories that requires power companies to purchase electricity generated by companies or individuals who utilized alternative energy methods to produce the electricity at the standard market rate. Can your imagine if this would happen the type of growth there would be in the alternative energy? Companies would form just to produce alternative energy. (This is one avenue that the government needs to step into and pass laws. There's definitely too much "him-hawing" around at Capitol Hill. This is the problem where we have too many lawyers in the government and not enough scientists or people willing to act! Talk is great, but make some decisions already! There definitely needs to be some limits to lobbying and filibustering, in my opinion.)

Here's a couple of other ideas, which are not necessarily a part of the highways, but other sources to gather alternative energy:

• Wind farms: This is an idea that I would like to do, if I just had the capital and time.....create a wind farm. Buy some cheap land out in the middle of nowhere, or near somewhere, and start putting up wind turbines, both large and small. The downfall is part of point #3, requirements to make the power companies buy back the energy! If a law would be put into place under point #3, also have benefits for the traditional farms to add wind turbines, cheaply, onto their property. It would be a win-win for them! They get free electricity to power their homes, and possibly machinery (this would be reason to have farming equipment that was solely ran off of batteries/electricity, or at least hybrid,) and could still grow their crops. Maybe investors could provide the equipment to the farms, we'll call this "eco-generation sharing", and by doing so, provide the farmers with electricity for the shared usage of their land to generate electricity.

• Hydro farms: Cities/towns that have an abundance of rivers with semi-swift currents could utilize the kinetic energy from these rivers to produce electricity. This could be done without having to dam up the river, utilizing inlet pipes and turbines. There is also tidal power and wave power. See the hydro-power page on Wikipedia for a complete list.

Our country definitely needs to look into these method, regardless of how large our small, government funded, privately funded, etc. We really need to open our eyes to these to these sources!