Ok, so here is a futher idea on human power.
If you get a large turbine and make a large spoked wheel that people can walk around and push, could this produce enough electricity to be worth it?
The math seems simple. Take how much electricity is generated by the turbine in one revolution, then see how many revolutions can be induced by the larger wheel in one hour, so then you have electric output per time.
If you built a building to house this in and put up advertisements, people could come in and push the wheel for minimum wage per hour and get exersize to boot.
Ok, if someone has some figures on this, I would greatly appreciate it.
I got a reply in another post that a simple bicycle generator can generate 200W in 45 minutes.
That's 1 person.
Say you had 5 people with 5 bikes, that's 1 Kilowatt in 45 minutes.
If you take my idea above, with a big turbine like those in the Hoover dam, for instance, say you could generate 1 Megawatt per hour.
So you sell 1,000,000 watts to the grid at $.01 per watt (which I think is the going price?).
You pay 100 people turning the wheel $10/hour.
That's $10000 dollars in, $1000 out. A HUGE profit. Why hasn't anybody done this?
EDIT: Ok, so I looked up the price for Kilowatt/hour, say $.10 is average (can be as much as $.12 in California) so that's $.0001 per watt. Even with that price, (keeping things just as cheap as they are now) You would still break exactly even, which is enough to put all of the oil companies and nuclear power plants out of business) And that's assuming you could only make 1 Megawatt per hour. If you could make 2 Megawatts per hour, that would be a 100% profit which is as much as any retail store makes.
Convince Health Clubs to do it. They already have the stationary bikes and treadmills and weight machines there. Work out a way to hook a generator to each one that channels the power produced to a power storage system (batteries) that can be used for lighting, etc.
Let's take all the excess FAT we greedy, wasteful humans are carrying and put it to good use. LOL!!! :D :D
Yes, I've always thought gyms were the most backward idea society ever came up with...So you have to pay someone to expend your energy? I guess it's similar to college, but you don't risk getting skin diseases (in college) :P
and put there in a gym a big adverisement : "Come and work out for the green planet!". ;D with this green energy the gym could supply some buildings in neighbourhood,excercising people would pay appropierately less for using of the gym.Gym would still have the same profit because of selling the elecricity and would have more clients becouse of lover prices and nice marketing ;) and clients would feel better when "helping the planet"
;D ;D
Have a "Big-Watts-of-the-Month" contest. Give people discounts based off the amount of power they generate. LOL!
This is getting silly!!!!!
Good for a laugh.
Build it in a prison have the prisoners push the wheel in shifts.
Quote from: erickdt on April 29, 2008, 11:22:52 AM
Build it in a prison have the prisoners push the wheel in shifts.
LOL... I said that to some of my friends a few days ago ;D
I have another idea...
In all workplaces, bosses should attach generators to all door hinges and revolving doors. So that people on their way to and from work, and as they move around the workplace, can generate power.
This would redefine the meaning of the phrase "People Power" :D
This idea is not new...
You may recall that Conan the Barbarian got his muscles by pushing a large wooden wheel around for years.
LOL
Sorry, I couldn't resist a reply to this one.
However, I really do think it has great market potential.
It certainly does!
It addresses the idea of EFFICIENCY!!!!
I don't consider fossil fuel power devices as inherently evil. I see the inefficient deisgn of those engines using them that are mass produced or employed to be though.
I DO want to "witch up" new and undiscovered sources of energy for mass consumption, BUT I want to design them the most efficient way I know how, and failing that, to make the MOST of the energy I use today to make sure it's available later.
Efficiency may not be the easiest or cheapest to design, implement, or purchase; but it makes the most sense over time.
I've often wondered whether you could put small water turbines in the piping that goes to your shower, sink, etc. to use the water pressure released when you turn on the water to generate electricity.
i had a similar idea but i imagined one turbine placed on a main water feed pipe.Second step was to pre heat cold water by warm waste water. both concept would be nice in a fully "green house" :)Also on-demand water heaters so no idle warm water boiler energy needed (only pilot flame in gas heaters).The same for central heating system-only when water moves then its needed to be warm.And so on.. a lot of improvement is still there :)
Quote from: Creativity on April 29, 2008, 05:06:48 PM
i had a similar idea but i imagined one turbine placed on a main water feed pipe.Second step was to pre heat cold water by warm waste water. both concept would be nice in a fully "green house" :)Also on-demand water heaters so no idle warm water boiler energy needed (only pilot flame in gas heaters).The same for central heating system-only when water moves then its needed to be warm.And so on.. a lot of improvement is still there :)
Or you could install such a turbine system at the base of municipal water towers...
Power siphoned from gravitational effect of water pressure or weight will result in lower water pressure in the sink unless it's in a region where water pressure has to be reduced for sane output to the sink because it's close to the water tower, but lower than the end point where weight of the water in the tower converts downward potential energy to sideways potetial energy for delivery due to restriction and plumbing.
But there are those areas. :D
Plumbing is gravitational engineering. Delivery of a weight to it's highest point, and disposal to that same level of origin(waste).
If the pressure to convert 600 lgpm (liquid gallons per minute) is acheived by a diaphram with a tiny hole to serve 3 houses @ 60 lgpm, isn't it acheived just as easily with a hole twice as large and add a turbine or pump equal to the newly opened area converting the pressure to energy?
It may not equal more than the energy it took to get the necessary weight of water to that point where it had all that energy, but it recoups it better than diaphram wear.
Quote from: jsd453 on April 29, 2008, 01:16:04 PM
You may recall that Conan the Barbarian got his muscles by pushing a large wooden wheel around for years.
Yes, I actually got this idea somewhat from that Conan scene :D
The problem with getting power from the public without paying them for it is just as people were saying.
If you use water pressure in pipes for power, then you will most likely have lower water pressure in your home. Similarly, if you hook up revolving doors to generators, those doors are gonna be really hard to push!
Two MIT students had the idea of putting spring loaded tiles in subway stations to convert the kinetic energy of foot traffic into electricity, but some guy got really upset about the idea...He compared it to little leeches leaching the energy you get from food, so you would have to eat more when you got home...
Quote from: Nomen luni on April 29, 2008, 05:42:13 PM
Saying something generates so many Kilowatts in a certain number of minutes doesn't make any sense. Kilowatts is a measure of power. Power accrued over time is energy, which is measured in Kilowatt hours. Human powered generators are not a new idea. They have been done.
I mentioned that 5 people could generate 1 Kilowatt in 45 minutes, so that's what 1 1/3 kilowatts in one hour? Same thing :p
If you can store that energy in batteries then time only comes into play when you say "Is it worth it to spend 8 hours a day turning a wheel to power my house? No. Is it worth it to spend 1 hour turning a wheel to power my house for two days? Maybe..."
NOTE: I just read on another post that an average house takes 10-20Kilowatt/hours per day to run. So that would take at least 50 people each on a bicycle to generate enough for a house
all day every day. But bicycle generators are geared in a way that it takes a lot of muscle power just to induce one revolution of the generator wheel. With a big wheel geared down to a smaller wheel, you get many many many more revolutions in the smaller wheel/generator for not as much physical energy expended so the energy of those 50 people could do a hell of a lot more.
I thought you gained torque when gearing down? Torque = force times the length of a lever, so the longer the lever, the greater the torque. In this case the lever length would be dependent on the size of the larger wheel, the larger the larger wheel, the greater the torque applied to the generator wheel.
Right?
Quote from: tmpcbtc on May 01, 2008, 01:03:33 PM
I thought you gained torque when gearing down? Torque = force times the length of a lever, so the longer the lever, the greater the torque. In this case the lever length would be dependent on the size of the larger wheel, the larger the larger wheel, the greater the torque applied to the generator wheel.
Right?
Maybe Nomen Luni did not make it clear enough. You cannot just start generating more power by changing the gearing. It just makes the wheel easier or harder to crank, but it all balances out. With a low gear (easy to turn the crank), the cyclist can pedal easily, but has to make more revolutions to generate the same amount of power that a higher gear would require. So all you gain is mechanical advantage - you cannot actually make the process more or less efficient by using gears (aside from the loss of efficiency involved with more moving parts).
Try riding a bicycle (a real one, not stationary) and you will see what I mean.
Quote from: utilitarian on May 01, 2008, 01:15:05 PM
So all you gain is mechanical advantage - you cannot actually make the process more or less efficient by using gears (aside from the loss of efficiency involved with more moving parts).
That's exactly what I mean though.
If you took a one megawatt generator and hooked it up to a large enough wheel, even the force of one person pushing the (VERY large) wheel would be able to spin the generator at optimal speed (to generate 1 megawatt constantly).
It is the same principle as a one megawatt wind turbine, which revolves very slowly, but generates 1 megawatt constantly. This idea is essentially just taking a wind turbine and laying it down on the ground, and having it pushed by people instead of the wind. (But with a wheel most likely of much larger diameter than the circle made by wind turbine blades)
Quote from: tmpcbtc on May 01, 2008, 01:32:54 PM
If you took a one megawatt generator and hooked it up to a large enough wheel, even the force of one person pushing the (VERY large) wheel would be able to spin the generator at optimal speed (to generate 1 megawatt constantly).
I don't think you are getting it. To make the scenario above work, the circle would be so large that it would take the person days and days to make enough revolutions to generate the requisite amount of power. So if (and I do not swear to this figure) the calculation is that it takes 50 man-days of pedaling effort to generate one day's worth of electricity for a house, there is no way to cheat this equation.
utilitarian has right.
u will have to push with less force,but u will also have to walk longer distance when pushing...in the end its the same work done.
just build yourself a Minto wheel and use the sun to do your slavery ;) :D
Quote from: utilitarian on May 01, 2008, 02:26:48 PM
To make the scenario above work, the circle would be so large that it would take the person days and days to make enough revolutions to generate the requisite amount of power. So if (and I do not swear to this figure) the calculation is that it takes 50 man-days of pedaling effort to generate one day's worth of electricity for a house, there is no way to cheat this equation.
Yes, exactly, a very big wheel. Say it took a full day for one person to push the large wheel 1 revolution. But every second of that one day, you are still generating 1 Megawatt of energy from the quickly spinning generator.
This link (http://science.howstuffworks.com/question658.htm)
It is a very efficient form of energy.
I was trying to find the link I saw of a guy who made a modified bicycle generator. He had to make the wheel he was pushing very large to get enough torque on his generator, which required him to sit like 5 feet up in the air on the bike, but it would power all his appliances for the morning.
If you tilt the wheel sideways and push, and make the wheel bigger, you get more torque.
This works!~
Quote from: Creativity on May 01, 2008, 03:47:48 PM
just build yourself a Minto wheel and use the sun to do your slavery ;) :D
<a href="http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/freenrg/minto.html>Minto wheel?</a>
Yes, hmm, the Minto wheel seems to work on the same principle as those little birds that drink out of a cup of water! The question is...why haven't we built some giant Minto wheels for national energy? :o