Preface: I am not an engineer. Also, I'm in a time crunch, so this is really just to throw an idea out there before I forget it and return to it in a week or so - so this is very stream of consciousness.
Brainstorming:
Ok, so, what do I spend most of my time doing? Schoolwork. What does that often involve? My laptop. So that relies on energy.
Where could there be some extra energy lying around? My cat certainly has a lot. Hmm, whenever the Warcraft servers go down, people complain that the hamster that power the servers died.
A ha! I need to exercise more. So can we get energy from exercise?
Well, turns out this has totally already been thought of (
http://www.los-gatos.ca.us/davidbu/pedgen.html), complete with breakdowns of how much time out of a device you get for an hour of bike riding (
http://www.los-gatos.ca.us/davidbu/pedgen/one_hour_pppm.html). For example, one hour pedaling -> two hours of "laptop computer", however vague that is. I run my laptop on energy efficient settings already, so maybe I could get extra time out of it. So if I had such a device and used it for an hour, I'd get over two hours of use out of my laptop. I use the laptop for 6-10 hours on any given day (I have a lot of work to do!), so it's just a small proportion, but it's a start.
Let's take it a step further. This guy's got his bike generator, is there other exercise equipment that could be adapted in such a way? I'm not sure if weight machines and the like would work, since those tend be used in a series of short bursts instead of a continuous motion like a bike. So we're probably left with cardiovascular equipment (but I'd love to be proved wrong!).
Treadmills? I've tried to run on a treadmill that's off before, to see if I could get the belt to move, and as I recall, it didn't go that well. Probably not going to work.
Elliptical machines? Similar problems, I've tried to use one of these while it was off and I don't think that went that well, either (though possibly better than with the treadmill).
Actually, anything that relies on electricity in the first place (like a treadmill) is probably a silly idea in the first place. Bikes can just be bikes. Could some other equipment be modified to not use electricity? Honestly I don't have an answer for that, I'm not a huge fan of exercise equipment (I'd much rather go for a run outside than inside).
Could we get a wh*** gym converted over to electricity generating equipment (bikes at least - others if possible)? Taking the gym at my school as an example, there are 20 exercise bikes of various sorts (29 treadmills, 8 rowing machines, 10 step machines, and assorted other machines). We'll say people do half hour workouts, so it takes two people to get one hour's worth of generation (see previous link for one hour pedaling -> x hours of electricity depending on the electronics in question). How much electricity results depends on the number of people using the gym, though.
TL;DR (that's "too long; didn't read") version - let's put a wh*** lot of electricity-generating exercise equipment in gyms. Of course, this is only helpful in areas where such infrastructure is already present, it isn't going to help some village in the middle of nowhere get electricity. But it could help reduce the reliance on non-renewable sources in cities. Also, if we can get such products in the home, it might encourage people to exercise more, if it'll be reflected by savings in their energy bill.
Cheers!
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