[newbie1234]

I'm imagining that you could power your house with some sort of wind turbine only instead it would be powered from a bicycle you keep indoors.

Would an hour a day (a great dose of daily exercise) on this "bicycle turbine" create the right amount of energy to power the house for the day? Just a thought.

Perhaps the amount of energy might require 4 or 5 indoor bikes (to which your whole family could get some exercise)? Is this possible and has it been considered?

[RonMN]

i think with the right adapter a bicycle could power anaything...washing machine, dishwasher, fan, saw, electricity, dryer, maybe even a soil tiller.

[newbie1234]

anyone know of a work-up that's been tried on this?

[aahala]

An hour of bicycle riding might be enough to power up the light on
your keychain for a day or two.

One horsepower(per hour) is supposed to be equal to about 745 watts.
That doesn't mean one could actually produce that much electricity, there
would be losses in production and storage and most humans are
only about 1/8 to 1/10 a horse.(In power, I've known some people
worth a whole lot less).

[gnm]

Most households use somewhere around 6kw-10kw a day. I think after line and inverter and battery losses you might get 200 watt/hrs from an hour of bicycling. So you could run say 2 small CF bulbs for a few hours off that... probably...

-G

[mortifiedpenguin]

A smarter idea would be to convert all the exercise equipment in gyms so they would generate electricity. So many people use gyms every day- we might as well get some energy from it.

[gnm]

These guys tried it.... http://www.otherpower.com/otherpower_ex ... cycle.html

Looks like they got 100watt/hr from one hour of pedaling... Might be able to improve efficency with gearing. Gonna be a good workout.

-G

[newbie1234]

A smarter idea would be to convert all the exercise equipment in gyms so they would generate electricity. So many people use gyms every day- we might as well get some energy from it.

I like this idea. How much energy would 100 people on bikes or other exercice equipment produce?

[MattSavinar]

About one hour of pedaling is enough to power a laptop for 3 hours. That's assumming an average person pedaling at an average rate.

It's a good solution for small scale applications. There are locales in Asia, for instance, where people are employed to pedal bicycles to keep a small amount of electricity flowing for the village at night.

Overall, however, it would increase our energy demand as you would need to grow extra food to power the people to power the bikes. If the food is grown with fossil fuel inputs, well you get the picture.

Higher oil = higher cost of food = higher cost to power the pedalers = higher cost of pedal generated electricity.

Back in the 1800s, they tried a similiar set up in prisons. They would have the prisoners work water wheels to power industrial applications, but they gave it up as they found a small lump of coal produced more energy than 5 guys working their butts off all day long. It cost more to feed the guys extra food than simply to use coal to power the machines.

You need about 200-500 hours of human labor to produce the energy contained in one gallon of gas. Even if you pay the laborers only $1.00/hour, we're still talking $200-$500 to produce what we're used to paying $2 for.

At $5/hour, we're talking $1,000-$2,500 to get what is in one humble gallon of gas.

That second law is a beyootch,

Matt

[MattSavinar]

A smarter idea would be to convert all the exercise equipment in gyms so they would generate electricity. So many people use gyms every day- we might as well get some energy from it.

First, we'd have to know how much energy it would take to perform the conversion process. Otherwise, we might make our situation worse.

A more cost-effective idea might just to be to shut down the gyms and save all the electricity that goes to power the heating, air conditioning, and driving to and from the gym.

Matt

[gg3]

A household pedal powered generator could be sufficient for bare minimum needs not including refrigeration (unless you assume a super-efficient fridge such as a SunFrost).

By "bare minimum needs," I mean primarily lighting at night, and charging batteries for running things such as the hypothetical Sun Frost fridge while you're asleep. Or, for example you have a stationary bicycle set up with a small table in front, where you can put a book to read (under a self-powered light) or a laptop or whatever.

I would see this primarily as emergency equipment for use during power outages, for example by apartment-dwellers in buildings that don't have photovoltaics (which are the majority of buildings).

Human power can be used in light construction. A table saw can be designed with a flywheel & clutch, driven from a pedal power unit. Pedal until the flywheel is up to speed, then hop off and cut a few pieces of dimensional timber. Or have one person pedal while another cuts plywood. A human can also provide enough power to run a portable concrete mixer at the rate of about a cubic yard per hour, which means you need three or four units in parallel to produce enough to do a house foundation properly (i.e. fast enough that you don't get cold joints in the pour). Hand-cranked hoists can be used to lift all types of building materials, e.g. timber or bricks to the second floor or above.

The basic tools of carpentry, masonry, plumbing, electrical, and roofing, are all hand powered; it's only been in the last 15 - 20 years that power tools beyond the basic circular saw and electric drill, for example nail guns and electric screwdrivers, have become popular. We can go back to hammers and hand-saws, and hand-powered drills, without becoming cave-men:-)


Aaron, those things the prisoners operated were called "tread mills," and I think that was the original use of the term. I've seen pictures, imagine a large gerbil-cage type of wheel that you're perpetually climbing the inside surface of. Yow.

Today fat yuppies pay good money to run on "treadmills" at the gym. The irony is not lost on me.

And I agree, yuppie-gyms will close down when people start getting more trim and fit from a less lavish diet and more physical work. There will still be gyms for more- or less- organized indoor team sports, and there will still be martial arts studios which are similar to gymnasiums in a way, and shooting ranges, and bicycle race tracks, and places to go and work out with weights, and so on. In fact I think that people will start thinking about building muscles that they can use for actual work rather than just looking the part.

But not all this electrically-powered equipment designed to simulate activities that people should be performing in their normal daily lives. Treadmills and stair-climbing machines and other absurdities will be relegated to museums.

[nocar]

Newbie, a smart way to use a bicycle to save other sorts of energy: Use it to go places. Instead of using gallons and gallons of oil to move one person plus the one to three tons of steel, rubber, glass and plastics that is called a car.

Nocar

[JBinKC]

That is definitely crazy. I don't think you would ever recover your costs to set up and maintain such a system even if the labor is free.

On the topic of wasted potential energy look at the many existing dams that are not set up to produce hydroelectric power.

[RiverRat]

On the topic of wasted potential energy look at the many existing dams that are not set up to produce hydroelectric power.

So true ... I live on the Mighty O-HI-O River and spend MANY hours fishing at one of the numerous dams up and down the river (hence my nickname - RiverRat).

I'm no engineer... but when the river is above normal stage... the current is rather swift. Is it even possible to 're-tool' an existing dam to produce electricity?

I'm discouraged that it seems impractical to use human mechanical power to generate personal home electricity in an emergency.

[JBinKC]

River Rat I have read some stats that just in the northeastern US alone there is enough potential power from 2600 smaller scale existing dams that produces no power that could produce enough power a million homes.

As for doable I think again it reverts back to return on investment. What makes this a potential important source of energy in my book is it is space saving and does not change anything which will eventually be some key considerations for future viability.

[BlisteredWhippet]

I'm no engineer... but when the river is above normal stage... the current is rather swift. Is it even possible to 're-tool' an existing dam to produce electricity?

I'm discouraged that it seems impractical to use human mechanical power to generate personal home electricity in an emergency.

There are practical methods of using small scale hydropower today. The engineering is somewhat complex, however, and the river must be modified. There are ways to divert flow for personal power generation that are minimally invasive. For perennial rivers, only a small relative amount of water needs to be diverted to run a small turbine that would relabliably charge a battery bank.

Heres an example of a low output water power station from Producing Your Own Power, Carol Hupping Stoner, ed. pg. 69:

This book was written in 1974. It assumes you have a plot of land and are looking to harness some homemade energy to do some kind of work. It also assumes you can just dam a river. Times have changed- FEMA, Homeland Security, and the military now control what you can and can't do. You can't destory deteriorating dams legally- that could be considered a "terrorist" act. You can't build them without permission either!

Luckily for us PeakOilers, the enforcement of the law is vastly undermanned and underfunded. In many places in America you should be able to find small deteriorating river obstructions, left from centuries of human development. Removal of many of these hinderances can result in long-term return of fish and wildlife. Ultimately, the issues of clean water and abundant protein souces come together with the need to support healthy ecosystem for animals and humans. As it is, our rivers are pretty much shot. It is not pretty. Most developed systems for carrying wastewater use the waterways for discharge of vast amounts of pollution.

At some point we need to decide whether it is worth it to destroy a river as an ecosystem or energy carrier, and replace it as a tool for performing various tasks like producing electricity or carrying our waste.

Small systems are the most sustainable, bigger industrial systems are even more powerfully destructive to river habitat.

http://www.fema.gov/fima/damsafe/ndspact.shtm

Dams in general are not doing good. Take a look at the Infrastructure Report Card 2005:
http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/pag ... &printer=1

The number of high-hazard potential dams (dams whose failure would cause loss of human life) is increasing dramatically. Since 1998, the number of high-hazard-potential dams has increased from 9,281 to 10,213, with 1,046 in North Carolina alone. As downstream land development increases, so will the number of high-hazard potential dams. As these dams often require major repair to accommodate more stringent inspection, maintenance and design standards, financial support for state dam safety programs must keep pace.

While the recent passage of the National Dam Safety and Security Act of 2002 (Public Law No: 107-310), which provides funding through grants, has improved state dam safety programs, it does not provide funding for needed repairs. It is estimated that $10.1 billion is needed over the next 12 years to address all critical non-federal dams--dams that pose a direct risk to human life should they fail. In the meantime, the 79,000 dams in the U.S. National Inventory of Dams continue to age and deteriorate, yet there is no national funding program to fund the repair of unsafe dams.

[rowante]

Wasn't there a bit of bicycle electricity action in 'Soylent Green'?

[Devil]

Wow! Beavers are terrorists! :D

[scootergrrrl]

Wow! Beavers are terrorists! :D

they were terrorists at my house. they chopped down a crabapple tree in my yard and dragged it into the stream the neighbor had a dozen chopped down.

hey look i found a scooter emoticon!