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    21st Century Ideas: Cycling for Home Energy

    Home energy produced at home.

    Started by: demosthenes Raves:6 Badge Winner! Influency

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    Imagine producing all the energy you need for your home by cycling. A stationary bicycle modified to produce energy through manual work could power your small home and give you a good workout. This energy could be stored which means the more you exercise the more power you'll have. Anyone you live with could contribute.

    I like this idea...yet, is it practical? People have to work and kids have to go to school. When you get home from a long day, all you want to do is put your feet up for a while. Can you imagine working an eight-hour day, then having to come home and cycle for four hours in order to power your whole house for one day/night? There would have to be an alternate source of energy, although cycling could definitely be a part of it. Could each home have a mini wind turbine and/or solar panels? Just some thoughts...

    i cycle everyday for fun and so do a lot of other people. why not put this to an excellent use. anyone in the family could do this so you could share the responsibily equally. plus, if you cut down on your electricity usage, it wouldnt be that bad. And, exercise is more addicting that most people think.

    I want to try it. But I don't want to ride my bike at home. I love spin class (indoor cycling class at the gym)but outside of class, riding a stationary bike is way too boring! If I can recharge myself and my household's battery at the gym at the same time, that would be great.

    I've actually seen this on the news recently. One gym in Connecticut attached some kind of electrical generator to each bike for their Spin classes. Apparently each class generates enough electricity to power a refrigerator for 4 hours. Good stuff.

    This is a great idea - all of the small, relatively energy-efficient devices that a home has could be powered this way. But it's 2019! Haven't we evolved past the stationary bike? They had those back in 2005 and before (see http://www.econvergence.net/electro.htm for example). I'd like to see us move to a small, portable battery pack we could fasten on to the back of the bike - nothing too bulky, but still capable of storing energy. Then, it's simply a matter of using the bike for your commute, and you'd have plenty of energy stored up for your evening at home.

    excellent! and if everyone in the community was involved in producing their own energy from manual work, it would be possible to share extra energy or trade it for something you need.

    We have televisions that only work if you are generating power on the pedal plan; sort of a luxury tax. As a result, none of us watches much TV.

    New superstruct Portable Energry discusses this idea and wishes to invent new ways to produce our own energy. check it out and add your ideas.

    This is, in fact, practical. Potenco's pull-cord generator (http://www.potenco.com/) can be attached to the hub of a bicycle to generate electricity. Just pull out the rollers. Here's some more about different ways to power things with pedal power: http://www.scienceshareware.com/bike_gen.htm. The Pedal-A-Watt stationary generator Glee mentioned (http://www.econvergence.net/electro.htm) could be hacked with a bit of DIY ingenuity. In fact, all of these things can be easily rewired and hacked. Check out the pedal.ic.ious Superstruct if you're interested in using pedal power to solve problems! http://www.superstructgame.org/SuperstructView/11 Even if you don't particularly enjoy stationary bikes, in times of Quarantine, it's a great way to stay in shape when you're stuck inside.

    Now wait a second - just how big are you people's chipmunks anyway?




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