This exercise bike can store your pedalling power and run your fridge - is this the future of indoor cycling?
This exercise bike can store your pedalling power and run your fridge - is this the future of indoor cycling?
Finally, a way to capture all that energy output and put it to good use
It'll be amazing if it works but I really want to see this in action. Last time I saw anything like this in person you had to pedal like fuck to power a light bulb.
If it was really to power the fridge then it would be better to turn the compressor directly rather than with electricity?
From an efficiency standpoint sure, but then a person has to be able to consistently put out the amount of power the compressor is designed for at the times the compressor needs to run. At least with a storage system the work doesn’t have to be done at the same time it needs to be used.
That's an interesting thought. You could store pressure in a tank. I wonder how efficient that would be?
These sorts of things can definitely work but you can also make one at home without a ton of trouble. Basically all generators/motors are is some magnets and coiled up wire. There are kits you can use to regulate the voltage and hook them up to battery banks.
I've used stuff like that in airport amdntrain stations to charge phone. I've also tried to plug my laptop in it but it was way to hard, I could not do more than 10 min for my laptop but I could probably keep it running with a bit more practice.
There's efficiency losses in order to store it, and humans don't put out a whole lot of power anyway.
This is just solar power with extra steps.
On a more serious note, if you're spinning for exercise anyways, this is a great concept. Unfortunately, the people who I know who do it, usually use their road bikes on a static converter; so I'd like to see this as a converter rather than a full rig.
extra steps
lol, that's close enough to be a pun
I mean, quite a few ways we generate energy are solar with extra steps.
Remind me of that one black miror episode !
Gotta pedal to see the girl of your dream being 🤫
They really went with the blacked ending.
My (relatively small) refrigerator consumes around 170kWh annually.
According to another commenter further down, a pro cyclist can put out 300W continually. That works out to about 566.6 hours, or 23.6 days of continuous cycling just to power the refrigerator for a year.
I am not a pro. The last time I seriously tried to use an exercise bike, I was able to keep a steady ~110W over 45 minutes (which left me drenched in sweat and feeling jittery for quite a few hours after the fact). That works out to 1417 hours, almost exactly 2 months, which I would need to spend on the bike at my absolute limit per year to keep my refrigerator running.
And of course, none of this is taking losses in energy transmission/storage into account. In short, I don't see this catching on any time soon.
That looks awful to ride.
Looks like it's purely a design concept (and not a new one either) by someone with neither technical skills or cycling experience TBH.
Yeah the ergonomics seem... questionable.
Looks neat, and having everything fully enclosed is a good idea. If someone is already in the habit of exercising on a stationary bike (I'm not) it could be a great way to have a backup battery or create power savings
I heard about a concept like those for a gym powered by their stationary bikes, but the math just doesn’t work. A pro rider can put out about 2000 W for a short sprint, but about 300 W for an extended time. That 300 W works out to about 5¢ worth of electricity per hour of working out, or about $20 if a person averages that for an hour per day for a year. That $20/year has to be able to cover the cost of the added generator system in the bike, whatever battery/inverter system that’s storing the energy, and/or the interlock system to put that power into one’s electrical service.
It’s great if you want to power the electronics of the stationary bike, maybe with a USB port to power one’s phone/music player. Trying to offset electrical costs with human/animal labour is not going to be net positive except in very niche situations.
Bingo.
I feel like these are usually put out by some kind of art or design student who hasn’t taken enough physics courses. Sure it’s easy to say “well, you’re peddling anyways so why does it matter?” But at the end of the day making this bike over some simpler bike is never going to recoup the cost or energy required.