if my computer was driven by a bike I would either be in good shape or at least cut the addiction down.

I figured that it would be called the "Laptop From Hell".

This is for rural households in developing countries. It can provide enough power for a few light bulbs and to charge cellphones and tablets.

It's great for what it's intended for but it's not an answer for modern developed societies, although it could reduce electricity bills and carbon emissions.

can use it.

Let's assume that a single person will use half that, 15kWh per day. If you bike for 10 hours straight, you would produced about a single kWh worth of electricity.

The phrase "not enough hours in the day" comes to mind. Also, do you know how much food you will have to eat to handle that kind of physical exertion?

providing electricity. And provide much needed cardio exercise.

You will spend more on food than you will save on electricity. My back of the envelope calculations come out to around $5 worth of food to produce 12 cents worth of electricity. And that is assuming 100% efficiency converting food to mechanical energy and that into electrical energy, which is never going to happen.

Also, prducing your food has an energy cost in fossil fuels tied up in production and transport.

Thermodynamics is a bitch.

doing some mild arobics would be waaayy too much. Excuse the sarcasm, but I see the electricity producing exercise bike as a win-win, despite your math.

might manage 50 watts an hour, which means they would have to bike for 20 straight hours to produce a single kWh worth of electricity, or 1/30 of the power consumed by the average American household. You would also burn something like 7,000+ calories in the process, meaning you would need to eat a lot more and food costs money.

Also, there is the cost of bike/generator rig, which is about a $1000. Assuming a much more sane two hours a day, producing 100 watt hours of power, that works out to about 1.5 cents of electricity per day, or $5.48 per year. So, your break even point on the equipment is 182 years.

If you want to exercise, you can do so without spending a $1000. It's called walking. As to energy savings, you can have a far greater impact on your energy bill if you simply turn down your water heater 5 degrees.

We could solve a lot more problems a lot quicker if more people had better critical thinking skills.

On the other end of the spectrum, in the developing world where lighting a single LED bulb, powering digital electronics and pumping water are the primary uses for electricity, how do you think it would fit in vs solar panels?

produce more power, and would be cheaper to maintain as they have no moving parts.

Also, the fuel is free.

You of course mean "50 watts" rather than "50 watts an hour." Watts indicate the rate at which energy is produced or consumed; the total amount of energy is given in watt-hours. If pedaling can produce power at a rate of 50 watts, then pedaling for an hour generates 50 watt-hours of energy and pedaling for two hours generates 100 watt-hours (not 100 watts as the second paragraph implies). From your correct use of watt-hours elsewhere I suspect you know all this and I'm just being a pain in the ass, but so many people don't understand it that I thought it was probably worth pointing out. Also, I just like being a pain in the ass.

Reducing the water heater temperature indeed does save energy and also reduces health risks of very hot water. (It can also motivate quicker showers!)

would generate 50 Whs of electricity. I then pointed out that such an effort would require 20 hours to produce a single kWh of electricity. You are correct, I needed to be more precise in my words.

Let he who is without pendantry, cast the first "Well, actually..."



The rule I heard about water heater temps was that it should never be so hot as to be unbearable, since that is when you can get burned.

Who live alone, need to lose weight, and want to reduce electric bills (especially in winter).

I'd love to have one if it was only more efficient...produced more that 1kW per hour.

200 watts per hour, about 1/5 of that. So, you and I will not even come close to that.

Seeing videos of people setting up a bicycle like this to power a TV.

exercise cutting back on my carbon footprint at the same time that would amazing. The cost of buying one would be crazy and they're not for sale, but building one is a thought. My husband has already made a hand powered generator for fun but the storage is a problem(expense)for any good use . but something like this hard wired so your putting energy back into your system would be a thing. I wonder if you would have to get permission to do it from the electrical company like you do for solar.That's a problem with solar other then COST$$$. You either have to go off the grid or get permission . They never want to give it. I want to do this

and those things weren't plugged into the home's main electrical grid (and thus the power company) then I don't see why you'd need permission.

Or, being an expert, figured you didn't need to read carefully because you had already decided it wouldn't work.

“Everything requires energy. Energy is the great equaliser,” says Bhargava, adding that over half of the world’s population have no access to electricity or access to electricity for two or three hours per day.

system. It will produce much more energy than this bicycle idea and not require humans to eat more to supply the energy (unless the poor countries have excess food).

Solar is likely cheaper per kW and doesn't have the mechanical breakdown problems.

solar/wind make a hell of a lot more sense in that they produce much greater amounts of power without requiring expensive fuel (i.e. food).

A single 350w solar panel will produce almost 1.8 kWhs of electricity from sunlight, which many countries in Africa have a lot of. A human powered generator would require constant pedaling for at least 18 hours to match that output(best case), and require additional food to make up for the human energy expended.

If you ran the bike with 24 volunteers on an hour shift each, you would get 2.4 kWhs. Assuming a food cost of 1/4 cent per calorie, your volunteers would need to consume $6.00 worth of food to produce about 30 cents worth of electricity.

Compare to the cost of wind and solar where fuel cost is zero

Depending on the location, a wind turbine would produce far more power, since it will operate at night as well as during the day as long as there is wind.

I am sorry, it is a waste of money to try and power a village this way as opposed to using a solar or wind solution. An energy source that depends on human generated is not viable in countries where people are seriously short of calories for their daily needs, like fending off malnutrition.

To paraphrase the great engineer Montgomery Scott, "I'm sorry, but I canna change the laws of thermodynamics."

Ain't math and physics a bitch?!

There's no free lunch - interesting to see the physical representation of the energy needed to now power the average home. It's as if we are all living as if we had 24 workers (they used to call them slaves) working for us in the form of cheap energy providers.


Now solar, etc - as well as more efficient devices - may be better provided the payback is there.

but my example would only produce 2.4 kWhs of power, whereas the average home needs 30kWhs. So, you would need more than 10 times that number of slav.... er, I mean members of the "sharing economy", to power your house.

without cheap energy - we're in for a very rude awakening on what the normal lifestyle would be

the end of October, and with all the planning I have developed a great appreciation for what electricity can do. We also bought a used 2012 Nissan Leaf last December and have driven it to work every day. I look forward to the coming day when we can see cars with 200+ mile ranges that don't cost $80K.

My electric bill was 58 dollars for October. They better practically give me that contraction for free.

So if October is a typical month, you pay about $700 a year to the electric company. This contraption would be more than worth it if it cost $1000 and did what it said, you be $400 in the black after 2 years and then getting free electricity after that.

put his energy consumption at roughly 16kWhs per day, half the national average. You could produce roughly 100 Whs of electricity per hour of pedaling. This means he would have to pedal for 160 hours to produce a single day's worth of electricity.

If he pedals for a more rational two hours a day, he will produce 200 Whs worth of power, or about 2.4 cents worth of electrical savings per day. This works out to $8.76 a year. If the bike cost $1000, he will have to pedal a 114 years to "be in the black".

See my response to his post. You simply cannot produce enough power by human effort to offset your electrical use, even though you use about half the national average of electricity. Under the best of conditions it will take over a century to recoup your initial investment, as opposed to say 10-15 years for solar panels.

Have been one of the more enjoyable parts of my day. I gotta get the hell out of this office.

powered your home for 24 hours ???

Yes.

I would love a rower version for my home, but I have my doubts.

I consume about 1200 kilocalories in 2 hours. Lets say 70% energy conversion. That is 1000 Wh.

This is about 1/10th of my home requirements (I don't have a bill in front of me).

Could I power my house during my rowing time sans air conditioning?

Interesting is a scene from Soylent Green where Charlton Heston uses a stationary bicycle to generate power to run a small television. When I have been at Science Museums I can generate enough energy to keep the light going for a while.

Maybe a rower version would be a nice science project for the future.

On edit:
We used 17 kWh/day last month (somewhat more than what I estimated). So I would need to produce 708 Watts/hour. That would be tough rowing, and of course I could not do it for 24 hours.


1000 Wh (1kWh) is about $0.12 (less in my area).

Finances definitely not a reason to do it. Consider how much more I eat to fuel my rowing.

It is possible to do it on a 1 to 1 basis. A team of elite rowers did it. So if you have 30-40 superathletes living in your home then it is doable.

http://phys.org/news/2012-07-world-rowers-electricity-power-house.html

he also said it powers lights and charging phones during the night...so they are using the energy at night when very little energy is required.

It still has a long way to go to make it worthwhile to anyone in a developed country.

Oh well...I guess you could still feel good about people without power having a way to charge cell phones at night.

"Maximum power levels during one hour range from about 250 W ("healthy men&quot to 500 W (exceptional men athletes)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_performance

1hp = 746 watts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsepower

Bloody exhausting. I can barely get 5K in under 20 minutes. I can only get 2K in about 7:30. I can only get 500m in 1:35. I want to be able to get 500m in 1:25 - I don't see how it is possible - maybe I gave to heavier than 170 pounds - but the 1:35 crushes me in ways I have never felt. Running 7.3 miles over big rolling hills in under an hour is not nearly as hard.

I must be doing it wrong because I know form is crucial.

I only look at the time and Calories. I watch Netflix television shows while rowing (I don't watch them without rowing - that is my motivation). Most shows last between 34 to 42 minutes (depending on network they appear on). I try to stay above 600 calories/hr, but I push myself sometimes to 650 calories/hr.

I have lost 90 pounds doing this and gone from a 3X to a Large with the limitation on my shirt being my chest and not my waist. Probably went from a 54 to a 41 waist. I have been doing this since mid-January.

I usually do three watch sessions of one episode each. In the morning (sometimes shortened to 30 minutes). After I get home from work, and before I go to bed. I also walk at work for a 1/2 hour everyday, and walk or jog about 1 hr/day (very slow fighting with two border collies as I run who like to pull different directions).

Every time I go to the gym and work out on those machines, I always am thinking,
"damn, look at all this FREE energy getting just pissed into nowhere??"

More recently I've seen a few posh uber-liberal gyms that actually DO use some or
all of that energy on-site, so there's that. but THIS home-based, one-hour to power
an entire house for 24 hours, is just unreal, in a great way.

Thanks for the OP. Gives me a huge smile

You might be able to power your house on a 1 to 1 basis but you won't be able to do it for 24 hours.

Also human calories are expensive. Electricity is cheap. See my analysis on another post.

This is a great idea for a village that is isolated though, and it would be something fun to have. As far as solving the energy crisis - I don't think so.

but I reserve the right to still think it's cool as hell, that at least low-energy users could benefit,
and the bike thing might perhaps get coupled with solar to help promote more off-the-grid
sustainable household energy use.

not power their houses, downtown LA, etc. It will be useful for the 10,000 Indian villagers who want to charge their phones and computers, and that's about it. And no, not every villager (or even every village) in India, Africa, South America, Asia, is going to get a free fancy bike to provide power.

power it with a bike and a couple 500watt solar inverters and kill about tenth of your electric bill . Getting the exercise as well it's a concept and when you have kids any savings is savings. My husband who is the engineer was joking make one for each one of the kids and there you go , all of it for just under $500.00 bucks a pop

and a few other things so you wouldn't be pedaling your ass off for no reason other than to get rid of it

The cats certainly aren't interested.

I think their total energy output per day is .001 microvolt.

IMO we should use every form of alternate energy — wind, solar, geothermal, wave and exercycle etc. — that we can deploy to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels.

I've love to workout on one while I use my laptop.

Who hasn't connected an automotive generator by fan belt to an old bicycle?
It is real exciting......until the young inventor realizes how little electricity is supplied by one person on a bicycle. ..a few 12v light bulbs at most....maybe recharge a notebook,
and that is with serious peddling.

Still, I want to believe.
Maybe this guy has found a 100X force multiplier for the peddling or electrical output?
His equipment looks well designed and prepared....but how much gain will that represent?

For example, http://www.magniclight.com/index.php/en/

Don't think the powers to be are going to like this.

and completely uneconomical. See the other posts for why.

I like the idea of being able to cut my electricity costs and lose weight at the same time. Only question is, can I afford the bike?

It reminds me too much of this Black Mirror episode:

In a bleak, automated future Britain, Bing is one of millions who pedal exercise bikes to create energy as a living. Their currency is merits, tokens with which to buy food from vending machines and which can be increased or decreased according to which shows one watches on giant television screens. A popular choice is 'Botherguts', which humiliates over-weight citizens....

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2089049/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ql_5

Viewable at http://www.channel4.com/programmes/black-mirror/on-demand/49114-002
(Registration required)

nt

from http://www.bicycling.com/training/fitness/guide-power-meter-metrics

"A Tour de France rider will average 200-300 watts for a four-hour stage; that’s an intensity most recreational riders can sustain for only an hour or so"

so let's be generous and assume 300 watts (watts are counted over an hour) so that is good
we get 300 watts right? except generators aren't 100% effective (some large steam ones (think powerplant) are 98% effective, most are in the 90-95% range) so dump off 15 watts there

total out 285 watts or so
assuming no fridge, electric heat or ac, and no electric cooking
and no big tv (small 12 v unit) and LED lights
it might..just might keep a place lit and either a tv or a small computer (laptop or raspberry pi) up and running

It tends to make people unhappy, since they'd rather hear what they want to hear.

I once traveled through the area around the slums of Mumbai. Somehow, I don't believe the people there were going to have access to all that metal. Hell, they can't afford sheet rock or lumber.

But it's a nice fantasy, every poor person is going to live like Americans with only a bicycle.

As for math...don't do it. You'll make enemies. The point of being "environmental" is if you believe really really really really hard...I mean really...really...really...it will happen just like we want it to.

Thanks for the heads up though.

I'd rather be practical for the environment, it benefits the environment more.

for me..i used to get the question daily, this electric bicycle, does it charge when i pedal?

physics..no it doesn't, no you don't want it to, it's not like a prius with tonnes of momentum

most motors we had on electric bicycles were 500w, so pedal 1 1/2 hours to 2 hours like a pro biker, whilst standing still to get 1 hour run time of the motor..doesn't make sense

There are some people here who know a good bit of science, but some who are completely clueless.

One should not surrender, in general, one's understanding of science for anything, whether other people like it or not. The truth is not always popular, but it is, in fact, the truth.

and while i appreciate hope and enthusiasm it must be tempered with fact and science

i used to (when i was a lot ruder and younger...well i was younger :-p ) reply to expressions like 'i have faith that' 'i have hope that' with 'hope and faith we keep at church x blocks that way'

never made me popular heh

btw stealing your above entry (parts) for my quotes file

I am always struck by how much human energy is applied to all those cardio machines at my gym--and it goes nowhere except to maybe reduce our asses.

I love this story about a hotel in Copenhagen that has their guests generate electricity through the stationary bikes at the hotel:

Black Mirror S01E02



Skip to ~2:32

Some days I may need the grandsons to come and help ma and pa get some energy. They have plenty!

It won't be long until your cell phones is charged by the motion of you walking with it in your pocket.

So 60 minutes on a bike could produce 0.05 to 0.15 kwh

But average daily US home electrical use is around 30 kwh

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_power
http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=97&t=3

you are sweating into the wind.

If you had one of these, and you have to exercise anyway, and you have a few batteries, you could have a little lower electric bill each month.

and maybe less chance of heart disease or diabetes.

I want one.

Electricity is cheap. National average is 12 cents a kWh. As noted by an above poster, humans can manage, optimistically about 150 watts per hour (0.15 kWhs), which translates to 1.8 cents worth of electricity per hour of exertion. An hour a day is $6.57 a year.

Sorry, but not even close to several orders of magnitude from "thousands of dollars".

A kWh (call it 1000 Calories (kilocalories) of power is $0.12. That is the most that you can realistically expect to generate (and probably significantly less). You probably can't do it more than two hours/day. That is a quarter. You have probably consumed at least $1 of extra food achieving this (for example $2/# chicken breast has 500 Calories so $4 for 1000 Calories). Even beans and rice will cost around a dollar - 1# pinto beans for $1 which has 1500 calories. Rice about $.75/# and 1700 calories.

The health benefits are great though. Even worth lying to someone who is pedaling I think.

our kids and grandkids paying extra in taxes to help with the great migration when they have to move the people from the cities in the East and South that are then underwater, as well as the cost of dying from lack of food when the increase in temperatures, already upon us, begins to reduce our food production.

Everyone is already lying...hard to see from atop the High Horse of Self-Righteousness,...

The air would be cleaner, and millions more people would have fresh air jobs if we eliminate tractors and harvesters.

I imagine a good stout team of about 40 to 50 people could pull a container full of fruits and vegetables to the closest solar powered railway.

if our doctors are telling us to work out on a bike everyday anyhow.

First off, it would only be of use in a developing country with very SMALL electrical needs. People in those countries are not worried about getting to the gym, they are worried about having enough to eat. Running this type of contraption would exacerbate the situation since the amount of calories expended to generate electricity would be far more expensive when obtained from food as opposed to other methods.

Last time I was on an exercise bike that measured in watts I had to bike at a steady 6 mph to generate 100 watts. So you would have to bike for 10 hours straight to produced a single kilowatt hour of electricity. That's a lot of effort for 15 cents worth of electricity. I think 1.5 cents an hour is a wage that will have few takers, even in poor countries.

If you took the money the bikes cost you could pay for a village solar installation and charging station that would actually help people.

Solar panels work. This idea doesn't.

I am disgusted. You are quite correct - the food they would burn to produce electricity would cost them more than any other way.

The west is crazy.

would fund having a solar panel or two installed. It's probably cheaper than this thing and wouldn't have any mechanical breakdown that this likely would have. And it would produce the power needed without the caloric intake needed by the human running the bike. Are calories easily available (food) in these countries?

And I still have people arguing with me along the lines of "Your math is no match for my denial of reality. This sounds cool, so it must be true.)

Is it platinum, I wonder?

This is stupid.
http://engineering.mit.edu/ask/could-we-use-exercise-machines-energy-sources

Start pedaling!

for your user name. Nationalizing the Fed would be the best thing we could possibly do because it would get rid of the Wall Street banker parasites.

One thought: The national debt is money WE owe OURSELVES. Why are we paying interest on it to Wall Street?

Here's a great article making the progressive case for nationalizing the fed

The public currency should be run like a public utility
http://www.progressivegazette.com/2013/12/nationalize-federal-reserve.html

"Who (or what) Gets the INTEREST?'

Interesting that interest is prohibited by Muslim law

Sharia prohibits acceptance of specific interest or fees for loans of money (known as riba, or usury), whether the payment is fixed or floating
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_banking_and_finance

Usury used to be illegal in (some of) the west. Miss a payment and you get upped to 30%. Should be a crime here.

It's relatively cheap and solar panels double in efficiency every year.
Solar is the future, especially for the developing world.
But in the end, energy independence is not driven by technology but by politics.

150 watt-hours (.15 kwh) sells for 1.2¢ in my area.

That's enough energy to run this laptop for about 2 hours.

He's gonna sell a lot of 5 hour energy with this "idea".

I think it could make sense in a gym, with frequent use, but I dont see the savings for home use.

I can generate 150-175 watts per hour (I have a power meter on my bike.) I bike 2000 miles a year, use 200 kwh a month and this would not supply all my power. Plus, there is no chance that I would ever bike 2,000 miles indpprs. How can I piss off a bunch of motorist in my living room?

So one hour of cycling saves me .10 cents. I would rather enjoy the outdoors and pay the extra .10 cents on my power bill.

I also reject the notion of free energy. I get home and will eat a steak and potatoes, or another big meal regardless if I bike or not. Im going to eat the extra calories so im glad when I can go biking.

For a lot of people in developing nations they need more calories as is. If they spend an hour cycling, they should be getting more food. Can they afford it?

Also, they tend to work tough lives. Maybe spend 12 hours in the farm, now they have to bike for an hour so they have lights. I think solar panels are a better idea. Thks is a small step forward, but perhaps millions spend on solar could be a giant leap forward.

Solar is cheaper and less impactful on the environment than these big bike generators, and the people who live in the communities for which these are targeted get enough exercise just going out for water and agriculture and whatever other work they have to do.

Silly.

Bicycling for 30 minutes a day for a week powered his TV set for a couple hours. But after a few months of it, he could waterski forever. Nothing tired his legs out.

[link:|

I was thinking more along the lines of,

Soylent Green...is...PEOPLE!

I recall from the wonderful and short-living HGTV series "Living With Ed" that Ed had a stationary bike hooked up to a toaster. Ed is a pretty sharp and resourceful guy. I think it was a DIY setup.

This Grist posting referenced it. It's a fun idea, but it's not very practical.
http://grist.org/living/ask-umbra-can-my-bicycle-power-my-toaster/

I loved his show.

a bike requires one to eat food (calories) to pedal and the efficiency of calorie intake to pedaling energy conversion isn't very high. A solar panel gets the energy from the source (the sun) and not indirectly through food intake, as this bike generator does.

It's easy to calculate how many kcal one would burn doing that, and from there get an estimate of how much you can power for 24 hours! It ain't an average house with fridges and all appliances.

... or yurt / lean-to / shack ...

Of course, if your tent is your primary family home then you have much better
things to spend the $1000 on ... like food, blankets, ...

Providing solar cells or wind-powered generators plus batteries to communities
would be a much better way to solve their power issues - not this "First World
Solution" of turning food into an iPhone charging capability.

Yes, it's a good thought (and the world definitely needs some good thoughts,
especially from the billionaires who have the capital to turn them into actions).
No, even with the best intentions, it is not the optimal way to do things when
you think it all the way through.