"Oh boy! I had one of those!"
Posted on 07/25/2007 1:17:54 PM PDT by topher
One way to calculate how much energy one billion people pedaling such a device 20 hours a week would be:
0.1 horsepower * 1,000,000,000 * 20
Given that a one horsepower equals about 746 watts, then this would be 20 Megawatts per week...
One application would be a new form of health club where exercise is rewarded by dollars or credits for kilowatts. There could be fundraisers, high school competitions, college competitions to see who generates the most kilowatts.
This is more just a concept than something practical at this time...
"Oh boy! I had one of those!"
Fire Fly Energy -- http://www.fireflyenergy.com
Fire Fly Energy is coming up with a Carbon Graphite Form battery that replaces the existing Lead Acid battery...
If everyone lit just one little candle..............It’d be pretty dang hot..........
I have to admit, conceptually this is very cool. Heck, I’d definitely be more inclined to get on a treadmill or elliptical trainer if I knew it was hooked up to my house backup batteries and could save me money on my electric bill. Maybe the motivation I need to exercise more (and save money!)?
Hook the pedal generator up to the kid’s TV. You peddle you watch.
Hook the pedal generator up to the kid’s TV. You peddle you watch.
How about a mandatory 4 hour pedaling time per day for all prison inmates?
The possibilities are endless. :)
If a one billion people on the planet would pedal 20 hours a week, the savings would be..
Pedal 3 hours a day to charge batteries? You are smoking something strong.
On the subject of powering a chainsaw with the generator:
If you were to instead take that chain and wrap it directly about the pedalset, would you be able to cut the wood ?
Maybe so, but it would be tough. Once the bladed chain touches the wood, the force necessary to move that bladed chain along the wood increases -dramatically-.
So lets say it was twice as tough to move the chain, cutting the wood. You would need to provide twice the amount of time on the battery to store the amount of energy to cut the wood.
And that’s being optimistic.
To cut a branch I imagine you would need on the order of an hour or more of pedaling.
Am I right ?
I’d prefer a home nuclear reactor. It could be engineered to last decades and fit in the area of a hot-water tank.
If a one billion people on the planet would pedal 20 hours a week, the savings would be..
Would this be a new service class of people? One billion people pedalling to preserve algore’s opulant lifestyle?
I have never understood why all the bikes down at the health club need to be plugged in to work. They have all cords run along the floor, that have to be taped down because they are tripping hazards, etc. Meanwhile on top of the bike you have somebody sweating like crazy and generating all this energy. Certainly enough to run the rinky-dinky display, logic circuits and resistance adjustment.
They would be Deltas, of course.
It would probably be greener just to kill them outright and use horses, though.
It's essentially a generator with a variable load that you can clamp a regular bicycle into for training on days when the weather is too crappy to ride outside.
But, it doesn't do anything useful with the 200 or so watt-hours of energy I'm about to gin up. It just wastes the energy as heat.
Of course, being the environment-abusing capitalist gas-guzzling global-warming inconsiderate conservative that I am... I kinda like that. :-)
Ah yes, the movie : SOYLENT GREEN starring Charleston Heston...
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