RSSMake Electricity Whilst You Exercise
March 30, 2007 · Written by Joel
Springwise, a source of some great ideas, has spotted an idea on how a gym can generate electricity. The energy created by the bikes and cross-trainers at California Fitness are used to power the lights and any excess energy is stored in batteries.
The concept is called “Powered by YOU” and was, according to their press release, created by French inventor Lucien Gambarota. Their president, Steve Clinefelter, explains, “One person has the ability of producing 50 watts of electricity per hour when exercising at a moderate pace, which means that to prevent 12 liters of CO2 from being released into the air a person needs to produce the same amount of electricity by exercising on the specially setup machine for one hour. If a person spends one hour per day running on the machine, he/ she could generate 18.2 kilowatts of electricity and prevent 4,380 liters of CO2 released per year. So exercise can improve not only your health but contributes to a greener environment.”
Currently the energy created can only power 10 or 11 60 watt lightbulbs but if every gym did this then the benefits to the environment are obvious. Every little bit helps….
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Sounds great, but what about the massive amounts of CO2 generated by the person exercising. In case you forgot high school Biology class, energy is created in humans when sugar plus oxygen is converted to CO2. It would take some heavy math to prove, but I bet a human comes pretty close to producing just as much CO2 as the article assumes is avoided.
Good point Jeremy, but if you’re exercising anyway then you’re not adding anymore CO2 than you would have done anyway. At least this way there’s a positive by-product.
The thought of generating electricity while on a commercially available exercising machine is exciting. Does anyone know of a site to find info on how to convert an exercise bike?
nice, http://www.humanpowergym.com great ideas start with sports. Could this be a Green Motorsport in the making.
[...] we’ve previously talked about gyms that generate electricity from your workout, the BTCV have a scheme called Green [...]
This website is promoting gyms that produce electricity.
Very interesting read Joel. Might as well do something constructive while you exercise, right?
i am doing a school science project and i have decided to see if the gyms could power them selves by using their gym members power. i am only twelve and dont understand exactly how it works. how do you take someones energy and use it to power a lightbulb?
To piggy back on what Joel said, the CO2 that you breath out is part of a closed system. (that CO2 came from the organic material that you consume which was retrieved from the atmosphere within your life time). The CO2 that is released from burning fossil fuels to power these machines took millions of years to be sequestered into oil/coal. Releasing that CO2 is what increases the overall amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.