Using a stationary bike to make electricity

[chrisgerman1983]

I thought about this a while back, but i thought a little deeper into it My idea was a Gym that all the equipment was hooked to generators. The amount of energy people burn at a gym would be measurable I am sure If you worked out enough it could even pay for your membership?

[GRU]

Originally Posted by getnpsi

If this could be done it would be great for all the fat kids and their xbox's. you can play video games all you want if you charge up your battery first. I can then see the fit kids sell themselves to power the lazy ones and profit. Maybe it wouldn't work, this is the US.

hahah, that gave me a good laugh

[flying kurmaster]

I saw a program where they took an old washing machine motor and stuck it on a bike, I think they ran it backwards but they managed to light up a light bulb. I like the gym equipment idea, I also thought about this and wondered why no one has never connected all the rowing machines, treadmills and stationary bicycles to some kind of generator. Someone should design this kind of unit that just plugs into the wall and turns your electric meter backwards. I know a few people that would be riding it all day long.

[roosterk0031]

Cordless drills make cheap little generators, just need to find something to chuck it up to. They already have the gears to up the rpm.

[cfg83]

chrisgerman1983 -

Originally Posted by chrisgerman1983

I thought about this a while back, but i thought a little deeper into it My idea was a Gym that all the equipment was hooked to generators. The amount of energy people burn at a gym would be measurable I am sure If you worked out enough it could even pay for your membership?

Here you go :

Chinese Seniors at "Outdoor Gym" Generate Electricity For Local TVs : TreeHugger
Universities generate electricity in the gym - US news - Environment - msnbc.com
HUMAN-POWERED GYMS in Hong Kong | Inhabitat - Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building

CarloSW2

[jtbo]

Powering laptop or tv with pedalpower alone might also lead to healthier life when your hours of using those devices would require quite bit of pedalling. For laptop half hour pedaling might give 1 hour computer time, with tv it might be hour for an hour at max, probably more pedalling than watching tv.

If it would be for exercise it would be just a gain to be able to recycle some of spent energy, also it would give bit perspective of how much work it is to produce electricity and also might lead to better ways of using electricity as one would value it more.

I would forget grid however, just charging battery and use battery to power equipment, that is how I think it would be most beneficial.

Lights in my house that I use consume total of ~18 Watts, as I use LED lights and even those I use sensibly, not emotionally, so I could power quite many hours of illumination by such generator thing.

I'm totally out of shape, but I can peak over 350W for very short period of time, 150W for hour is perhaps bit much for my abilities, but 100W surely.

I would perhaps choose adjustable charge controller so that one could adjust resistance by adjusting how much charging is done.

Rare earth magnets and custom generator might be nice way to get good amount of charging with little as possible resistance, like with DIY wind generators, that way also rpm for generator might be easy to adjust to suitable level, or perhaps by using some gearing, however one should keep losses in mind.

I would build one from real bicycle though, those stationary bicycles are not necessarily best for ergonomy and one might get more power output with real bicycle, also it should be possible to use those trainer stands to support the bicycle, then just use custom rear wheel that is the generator.

[cfg83]

jtbo -

Originally Posted by jtbo

Powering laptop or tv with pedalpower alone might also lead to healthier life when your hours of using those devices would require quite bit of pedalling. For laptop half hour pedaling might give 1 hour computer time, with tv it might be hour for an hour at max, probably more pedalling than watching tv.

...

My assumption would be a very small tv. Hmmmm, maybe that could be a goal. Start with a small tv and move up to a large tv. You'd know all the tv junkies by their massive legs of muscle.

CarloSW2

[jtbo]

Originally Posted by cfg83

jtbo -



My assumption would be a very small tv. Hmmmm, maybe that could be a goal. Start with a small tv and move up to a large tv. You'd know all the tv junkies by their massive legs of muscle.

CarloSW2

We have here LED tv system today, so power consumption is a lot less than those traditional units, even traditional TV was around 100W average, I believe, but LED models can get to that power consumption in fairly large size.

In US TV size has been larger typically than in our country, so there power consumption of TV has been probably higher. 32" is large TV here, when CRT was common typical sizes were 20" or even less, first Flat panels were not larger than 23" from those typically sold, but I guess in US those were used at toilet if even there, so there can be bit of difference in power consumption.

I have 27" computer screen now, no TV at all, but this screen is bit larger than typical, good for my old eyes and has LED technology, so power consumption is not very huge for this size, with laptop + 27" monitor it is around 100W and as laptop is around 40W that is 60W for monitor, should be around same for similar sized TV, which should be fairly easy to produce by pedaling.

Even modern Plasma models should use relatively small amount of power, but don't know much from those, it might be that they stop making those as people buy so little of them, there was news about sales being less than 50% from what one large manufacturer was hoping to get.

[chrisgerman1983]

guess the idea wasn't that original Another thought on maybe making the bike power more efficient would be to keep the drive tire on it and run the generator geared off the wheel somehow? that way you could fill the tire tube with water or cement so that you could have a freewheeling wheel that would keep momentum, if you stopped peddling for a second. that way you could get more consistent output from the generator? I like the cordless drill idea I have access to a bunch of them with batteries that wont hold a charge. Is there anyway that a charger could be used backwards as an inverter? hook the drill directly to the charger bypassing the battery?

[jtbo]

There is usually losses involved with rollers that rubber tire rotates, tire flex is already a loss alone, as power levels are fairly low any loss, even small one can be considered something to avoid.

Flywheel might store energy, but also it takes that energy when accelerating, so it would not be free energy, but I don't know if it could be used to store peak energy output from legs so that it could be extracted with perioid of time, it will be very little energy however as peak power can be produced only short time and needs long recovery perioid.

Flywheel is most suitable for power sources that are giving you just one pulse every now and then, like a rowing, now there you could put your legs, arms and whole body to work, so that you could work with higher output, freewheeling flywheel would be then be one that you spin with every pull, this way one could get away with heavy flywheel as whole body can peak quite impressive amount of power, when one is up to a speed, then one could just maintain that speed which would be less work, but rowing generator would really require a flywheel.

With bicycle generator one should learn skill of spinning, that way power output would be consistent and one could spin generator longer period of time as workload is more evenly spread across different muscles.

Also higher spinning speed should be good for long sessions as with slow spinning speed one is using muscle's local energy and with higher spinning speed with lighter load, one would be burning fat that is much more available.

In strongest man competitions they did not use bicycling to pull heavy machinery, it was more like rowing motion, I believe that is way to get one of the highest peak power levels from human body?