Turn fitness into electricity?

JDMYOFAN

Well...

A number of months ago my partner and I invested in a Kettler Condor cross trainer. It's not 'gym material' but more solid than the Kirsty Galagher gear

I was sat on my lazy !!!! last night watching some tv, contemplating how we should be using the cross trainer, but don't ever really..

Now, my question is... Can I somehow hook the cross trainer up to some form of battery > adpater into electrical appliances? If we were to use the cross trainer an hour a night, could we somehow use the rotation to store up energy???

Could even watch tv whilst doing it, how good will we feel then?!

JDMYOFAN

I think what I was proposing was logical..

a) It can save money
b) It's better for the environment, using less energy
c) It can be a motive to exercise

The knock on effects could actually beenfit you. By being more healthy, that could mean less trips to the GP, meaning less TAX money wasted

Wow, the possibilities are endless.

JDMYOFAN

I don't see how it is any different from wind turbines and solar panels

ashcarrot

Keeping to the point. I believe i saw something similar on blue peter though it wasn't powerful enough or required a serious amout of effort to power a TV. Im a house it would be uneconmical but what i would wonder if you turned a gym into this sort of power house how much electric it could generate (not massive amounts but significant i'd reckon.)

tomstickland

Yes, you can generate energy. Not very much though. I'll do some google reading into the typical output of a human when riding a bike etc.

A_fiend_for_life

Maybe fine if you have a suitable machine and doing exercise anyway - maybe just attach a dynamo to it - though not sure how you would regulate the supply.

One claim is that the average person can apparently generate 50 watts per hour on gym machines at a leisurely rate.

I am assuming that is for the more efficient machines such as treadmills and exercise bikes as they have rotating components that are more readily and presumably more efficient when it comes to generate energy through a dynamo.

You would basically be passing sugar through he human body to generate electricity through a machine. The Kreb's or citric acid cycle converts sugar to ATP which is used as the energy currency in the body has efficiency of about 63%. Add all the other processes such as catabolism ('tissue building'), and all the other tissues that are using energy and your probably getting a very small amount back from the sugar.

Not sure how many watts a TV needs but on 50 watts per hour you might get away with sound only, listening to radio 4 or collapsing in the opening credits of Coronation Street as the tabbycat jumps off the roof. (!!!!!cat - Arglwydd mawr! Ti'n rhoid geiriau yn fy ngheg!)

To generate energy from sugar I suspect you would be better to burn it for heat than generating electricity, not recommended, but you would then be putting your head on the biofuel block.

thescouselander

A_fiend_for_life wrote: »

Maybe fine if you have a suitable machine and doing exercise anyway - maybe just attach a dynamo to it - though not sure how you would regulate the supply.

One claim is that the average person can apparently generate 50 watts per hour on gym machines at a leisurely rate.

I am assuming that is for the more efficient machines such as treadmills and exercise bikes as they have rotating components that are more readily and presumably more efficient when it comes to generate energy through a dynamo.

You would basically be passing sugar through he human body to generate electricity through a machine. The Kreb's or citric acid cycle converts sugar to ATP which is used as the energy currency in the body has efficiency of about 63%. Add all the other processes such as catabolism ('tissue building'), and all the other tissues that are using energy and your probably getting a very small amount back from the sugar.

Not sure how many watts a TV needs but on 50 watts per hour you might get away with sound only, listening to radio 4 or collapsing in the opening credits of Coronation Street as the tabbycat jumps off the roof. (!!!!!cat - Arglwydd mawr! Ti'n rhoid geiriau yn fy ngheg!)

To generate energy from sugar I suspect you would be better to burn it for heat than generating electricity, not recommended, but you would then be putting your head on the biofuel block.

For a small/mid size TV you're going to need around 150w - you'd need to be quite fit to keep that up all the way through corrie. Dont forget that if you're putting out 100w of power on your excersise bike there will be inefficiencies in the process of generating the electricity and storing it and/or converting it to 240v AC. I dont think its worth the effort tbh.

The one thing that always amuses me about all this renewable energy business is that most people dont seem to have any concept at all about how much power things use. They dont seem to under stand that things such as wind turbines and and solar pannels on your roof produce a pathetic amount of power - same goes for this idea.

Idiophreak

There was a lot of stuff in the news, probably a year or so ago, about using "people power" to power stuff - mainly centred around "jiggling" things, iirc. There's something you attach to yourself that uses the motion of you walking/running to charge your MP3 player. Also, there was something you could put under pavements to use all of the footfalls to power the streetlights etc.

I often think this is a good idea though...when you're running etc in a big gym some times, you can almost feel the energy rushing out of people into the ether and think "there has to be some way of harnessing this". I think the bikes/rowers/crosstrainers are the most likely candidates for this (not powered like treadmills) - even if they just powered their own display, every little helps.

moonrakerz

Of course after you have pedalled away for a couple of hours to watch Eastenders for "free" - you then need to go and have a shower which uses twenty times as much energy as you have saved !

JDMYOFAN

I'm going to go away and look into this..

If it means I can power the router/home phone/charge laptop continuously then worth while..

If I was going to be using it anyway what's the problem?

penrhyn

Link to some statistics on peddle powered generators.

http://www.los-gatos.ca.us/davidbu/pedgen/stats.html

Enjoy.