this post was submitted on 12 May 2024
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Solarpunk technology
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Technology for a Solar-Punk future.
Airships and hydroponic farms...
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While what we can generate is negligible. If, for example you had these in all gyms, that's generating something. Not a lot, but more than nothing. Also all houses should have batteries and being able to remove the cost of a phone charge from what you suck from the grid would be nice.
Wasn't that the second episode of Black Mirror?
True, and the ads are everywhere too.
It's still unlikely to pencil out to do this given the opportunity cost of actually going through the effort of building, buying and connecting these things, to be honest.
I'm fascinated by the idea but it's important to remain realistic.
Here's a good article on the concept of bicycle generators: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2022/03/how-to-build-a-practical-household-bike-generator/
Personally, I think the best application of this concept is probably direct use of the mechanical energy, without converting the energy to electricity at all. See the bicimaquinas-concept: http://www.mayapedal.org/index.en
One of the wonderful things about bicycles is how extraordinarily efficient they are - very little energy is required in relation to how much transportation work you get out of it. This works against us in the case of power generation, though - little power going in means little power going out.
I love the bicimaquinas.
There's not enough focus on direct energy usage or storage in general. If you want thermal energy, collect and store thermal energy. If you want mechanical energy, use that directly (and I guess compressed air and hydraulic head count as mechanical energy storage).
What I think would be cool for an exercise bike is to just have a power takeoff of some sort. Lots of bikes use a flywheel already, but even if they didn't, but you could hook up a PTO to a flywheel or a charger so that in a pinch, you could charge your phone or whatever. Probably wouldn't want to use it if you had a better option, but nice to have in an emergency. Like those wind up flashlights.
It's a really good business idea that I've had more than once -- a self sustaining "green gym".
Members would leave their electronic devices in special hardened lockers, plug them in, and then go to work out, and the power from central battery bank would then charge everything that's in the lockers.
I also had an idea for credit system where the more power you generated the cheaper your monthly bill/subscription would be for the gym (only a few bucks here and there), or some kind of perks, like a free t-shirt once a year if you generated over 1 MWh (1000 kWh) or whatever.
The power generated by such a place would probably be negligible but it would give people the same emotional high as other pro-social tasks.
I saw a report on a gym with the idea that the exercise equipment would power the gym. It wasn't a good business model. They brought the reporter in and only turned on some of the lights - they had to be super stingy with electricity to get anywhere near net positive energy generation.
I've also had this same idea more than once.
I think the power output of the earlier commentor is probably for a "basic" fit person. But what about those huge bodybuilding hulks? How much is the power output when they're pulling maximums for a day?
In the best scenario, there'd actually br extra electricity to sell back to the grid, and the gym might be free for some of the "power-users".
However I think as the earlier dude points out, stable power output isn't that high and probably way more reliable to just put down solar panels, and a whole gym worth of generative weight lifting equipment would probably cost quite a lot.