Maybe some of you have experience with these or access to sources I don't have. Anyway, in my understanding piezoelectric materials generate electricity under mechanical strain.

Is it feasible to, for example, wrap something like a seismic isolation bearing (a flexible bearing that isolates a building or a bridge from ground motion and undergoes large deformations during seismic events) with one of these materials to capture meaningful energy from earthquakes? I'm thinking specifically for places like California. I can't find any material properties or corresponding equations that would allow me to roughly see how much electricity can be generated per unit of stress or strain.

Is this wildly impractical?

I like your thinking, but what you need with power is a reliable constant stream of energy. Power that comes for a few seconds and dissapates is not good without a reliable, large scale instant storage mechanism (which doesn't exist with current technology).

The thing would also have to be vast to capture meaningful energy. And there isn't as much energy as you think in an earthquake. The events themselves can be fairly big, but the energy would normally be captured many km from the epicenter (which is usually deep underground), and the energy spreads out in a sphere, so the total possible energy available is less than 1/r^2 for each m^2 of installation. As an example, a 5 on the Richter scale (2TJ) at 5 km from the epicenter would give you 40 KJ/m^2. Enough to power a single light bulb for ~10 minutes.

I figured there was a reason, that seems like a good one. Thanks.

You also can't generate a huuuuge amount of electricity w/o a huuge industrial installation using this method... Can these materials really return a > amount of electricity than it would take to produce and install them? Doubtful.

I think this thread is just another episode in my life that demonstrates how even thinking people have no comprehension of the windfall of [almost] effortless energy petroleum has given human beings