Want to revolutionize the worlds energy supply?

Question

Do you exercise? Ever see people running on tredmills? Do you walk? These are all ways of burnning energy, but you are also transfering energy, generating body heat, and through the movment of mechanical parts comes mechanical energy. I know some body can make a device ...a battery that attaches to your body being charged by the energy we give off. Attach generators to our exercise machines and we can harnes the energy we expend working out and harness the power of the worlds health contious individuals. Hook in your computers and ipods into batters energized by your own bodies movments and heat.

Answer 1

I am glad you are looking for ways to save energy because the wasteful use of fossil fuels is leading to some very serious problems; economic collapse as the fossil fuels become much more expensive and environmental and social upheaval caused by global warming.

Unfortunately there is a serious flaw in your suggestion.  It is that harnessing the energy used by people in doing exercises would be very inefficient.  Generally people do exercises because they have faulty lifestyles; typically they travel by car instead of walking and pedalling and they eat too many fatty foods.  If, instead of exercising (which is boring), they were to correct their lifestyles they would not need to exercise and would consume less energy too.

The one concession I will make to your suggestion is to point out that whilst I pedal from place to place I use my bicycle generator to charge my mobile phone and my GPS navigator.  But this is insignificant compared with the energy I save by pedalling instead of driving.

Thank you for raising an interesting question and best wishes for a more active lifestyle without the need for exercising.

Answer 2

in Scandinavian Europe they are using the heat transfers at railway stations to absorb the built-up heat from the 200,000 plus commuters who daily use the main station, to provide heating for number of public buildings close by.cool don't you think?

Answer 3

An average human can exert only about 1/10 to 1/4 horsepower. The exquates to only 186 watts. The money required to capture this extremely small source of energy would not be worth it. It seems like this kind of thinking is usually forgotten

Answer 4

As a Concept,your idea can attract some interest for experimenting. Personally, however, I would like to transfer the energy from my exercize to produce some work worth doing at home or in the Community.My experience is that this approach has the double advantage of converting the exercize energy into fruits and flowers in the Garden or a little playfield for the Street Children,after ensuring that I am exercised.The reward is very satisfying indeed!

Answer 5

Or, how come they have solar powered calculators, but not solar power cell phones?  Sure its a minuscule amount of energy savings, but as an overall strategy, I like the idea of disconnecting from the grid on a mass scale.  This concept saves on having to make the huge cost and energy expenditure spent by expanding infrastructure to support plug-in electricity for things like tvs, blenders, vacuum cleaners, computers and stereos, as well as cell phone chargers.

So yeah, I think it makes total sense to equip the excercise cycles in a gym with generators that run the TV the people doing stationary cycling are staring at.