Solarpunk technology

2359 readers

1 users here now

Technology for a Solar-Punk future.

Airships and hydroponic farms...

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

153

Exercise bike that can store 2KWh of electricity (mastodon.social)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

34 comments fedilink hide all child comments

This is an industrial designed exercise bike from Lithuania that can store 2KWh of electricity generated by your own exercise.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I love the bicimaquinas.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

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.