power at the gym

[geococeo]

every time i walk by a gym in new york city where i see countless people creating rotary motion on bicycles or reciprocating motion on any number of "work-out" machines i think my golly what an incredible output of energy these places could be powering half the city block if the energy output was converted into electricity!!! what do you all think?? got any specific ideas for different kinds of exercise machines besides bikes?? any investors out there?? ha this should be fun!!

[technospartan]

thats a damn pretty idea man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[killerrock123]

Hey do u have ideas to workout this project don't day dream

[geococeo]

dude this is no daydream i could make a generator out of an old motor and a bicycle with my eyes closed, im curious about other kinds of workout generation device ideas you all might have + i am broke as a skunk so i surely could not come up with the overhead...dig??

[The_Big_K]

Originally Posted by geococeo

every time i walk by a gym in new york city where i see countless people creating rotary motion on bicycles or reciprocating motion on any number of "work-out" machines i think my golly what an incredible output of energy these places could be powering half the city block if the energy output was converted into electricity!!! what do you all think?? got any specific ideas for different kinds of exercise machines besides bikes?? any investors out there?? ha this should be fun!!

Oh wow!

Every machine in GYM can be used to produce electricity! Can someone here estimate how much power can be produced using machines in the GYM?

[gohm]

I've seen several pedal powered TV sets. In addition to electricity generation you could also pump water.

[Jeanius]

I've actually heard of this idea (and heard of it being implemented), but I'm rather skeptical as to whether or not the energy that's produced is worth the cost of revamping all those exercise machines, even in the long run. I mean, I've seen high school science fairs where a kid converts bike rotation cycles into energy to power a light bulb, but it didn't seem all that bright (no pun intended). Think, however, of the cost of replacing (or retrofitting) all of those pieces of equipment and running them to batteries, or even just to the grid.

I agree that it is essentially a cache of free, wasted energy, but we could probably do just as well harvesting methane from people's farts.

If someone could crunch the numbers (as I don't know what the average resistance of an exercise bike is), I'd be interested to see what they'd come out to be. Or better yet, but probably not as accurate, get on one of those bikes, ride for 30 minutes, and see how many calories you burn. Convert that to joules/s and you'd get a ballpark estimate of how much power you produce. As a reference, for anyone who may try this, an average Walmart requires ~1 Megawatt of power.

[ash]

I think its quite easy to retrofit an exercise bike with dynamos, and use them to recharge SLA batteries. I read somewhere an exercise bike can produce an output of at least 15W.. quite respectable. Put the system at home, and it'll complement P.V solar off grid solutions pretty well.

Plus, instead of lifting/pulling heavy weights, we should put turbine shafts linked to generators. I'm pretty sure that those doing weightlifting could lift any heavy object whenever and wherever they want, but they go to the gym because:
1) they want to know exactly how much they are lifting
2) use the most efficient way to exercise a specific part of the body without serious injury
3) in some cases, know how much calories they are burning

If want to implement a electrical generating exercise system, we'd have to figure out those issues to make it more viable for commercialization.

What do you guys think are the technical challenges?

Patty, you reading this? why don't you collect some power data since you work out so often