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Using Human energy to power appliances?

Dustin Kesselberg

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Nov 30, 2004
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I have a flashlight and a radio where it's sole source of power is my muscles turning a little lever on the radio and recharging it. Somehow the kinetic energy of my muscles is transferred into electricity and stored inside of the radio or flashlight. It only takes a few turns of the wheel to provide enough power for several minutes of sound or light.


My question is this...How much energy would it take to power something like a 30 inch television?

If someone were to create some sort of exercise bicycle where the energy you put into the bicycle is converted into electricity and moved from the bicycle via a cord to a specific appliance such as a T.V., Could that work?

How viable of an alternative energy for home appliances is this? Have an exercise bicycle in your living room for instance and exercise on it 30 minutes a day and have a long cord from the bicycle in which you can plug into various appliances and put energy into them to store for later use.

I know it wouldn't work for all home appliances however this could cut energy use in many homes by a good fraction if they use this sort of energy for even 1/4th of their home appliances. I think it would kill 2 birds with 1 stone. Cut energy consumption and make people want to exercise more.


Could this work? Does anyone here have any expertise in this sort of technology?
 
How many watts is your flashlight?

How many watts is your big TV?

For a rough estimate, do a little basic math.
 
This is probably in the wrong area..


Anyway, How many Watts does an average 30 inch TV need to run? The sites say an average human can put out 50 watts for 20 minutes. How does this translate into real power for a TV for instance?

Also...Some of those models on that site seem to be put together in a way they might waste energy. What do you think?
 
fishbob said:
How many watts is your flashlight?

How many watts is your big TV?

For a rough estimate, do a little basic math.
Click to expand...

You must be joking - Dustins' idea of research is creating new threads for the latest thing he wants to solve. My latest fun idea - give him incorrect but plausible (to those who can't be bother doing simple research) answers. Or none.
 
50 watts seems a little low. I routinely cruise around at 100-125 watts on my bike (measured with a PowerTap wheel), and go up to 250 on a reasonable climb, and 500 if I sprint for a traffic light. I'm fit, but no super-athlete.
 
Dustin said:
I know it wouldn't work for all home appliances however this could cut energy use in many homes by a good fraction if they use this sort of energy for even 1/4th of their home appliances. I think it would kill 2 birds with 1 stone. Cut energy consumption and make people want to exercise more.
Click to expand...
(1) Get some idea of typical residential electrical consumption.

(2) Get some idea of the power generating capabilities of the human body. (Hint: folks interested in human powered vehicles have studied this)

(3) Use arithmetic to figure out how many hours of (2) would be required to provide a quarter of (1).

A little web searching can be very helpful in finding enough information to get at least a general feel for the numbers involved here.
 
fuelair said:
You must be joking - Dustins' idea of research is creating new threads for the latest thing he wants to solve. My latest fun idea - give him incorrect but plausible (to those who can't be bother doing simple research) answers. Or none.
Click to expand...
I like the idea except that there are other people who come here that I would't want to mislead. Now, let's be honest here, everyone should take any information from a forum, even a skeptics forum, with 10 pounds of salt but I see no reason to intentionally mislead anyone. JMO, I most certainly agree with your sentiment and it won't really bother me if you continue in this vain.

RandFan
 
No no no! We invent stuff so we can let the machines do the work.
 
I think if Dustin wants to know this stuff, he should just PM Iamme directly.
 
Sure, it can done. Any workable system will require a storage battery since it would be impractical to exactly match your output to the TVs input energy requirements all of the time.

This opens up the system to running solar or wall chargers. If it can charge with out your work, most people would cheat sooner or later; then cheat all of the time.

Just being honest.

-R
 
I had a similar thought the other day about whether gyms could or do harness their equipment. (this isn't a question, I am just too lazy to work out the answer myself).

Interesting how we have moved so far away from needing to expand our own physical exertion to sustain ourselves, that we have to invent ways to waste our energy.
 
From here

30" CRT Televisions consume around 150 watts
LCDs less
Projection TVs more

So you could just about power the TV, but of course you'd have to watch in darkness without a satellite or cable decoder
 
After re-reading this thread, I realized that I remembered an anecdote about Thomas Edison that was somewhat along these lines. He apparently used to give tours through his home and property to show off some of his inventions to interested people. He was very interested in making homes self-sufficient and had a number of inventions toward that end.

He also had an impressive garden that was fenced in with a turnstile at the only entrance. One fellow, apparently noting that the turnstile took some effort to cross mentioned to Edison that perhaps he should perform some maintenance on it, to which Edison replied, "oh it works just fine, for every two times the turnstile is used, a gallon of water is pumped up to the resevoir for the gravity-feed irrigation system.

I would think that either wind or solar power would be the first consideration since they wouldn't rely on human muscle power unless you could work it into something fairly innocuous like Edison did.
 
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Dustin said:
I have a flashlight and a radio where it's sole source of power is my muscles turning a little lever on the radio and recharging it. Somehow the kinetic energy of my muscles is transferred into electricity and stored inside of the radio or flashlight. It only takes a few turns of the wheel to provide enough power for several minutes of sound or light.
Click to expand...
Why bother with all that tedious mucking about with levers and stuff? Why not just run it directly off the energy that practitioners of reiki, acupuncture, therapeutic touch etc. assure us is teeming through your body?
 
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