People send me stuff. This story is making the rounds on Facebook. From Goods Home Design:
60 Minutes On This Bicycle Can Power Your Home For Twenty-Four Hours
Wouldn’t it be great to power your home without having enormous costs to starting a journey on the alternative road? Now, you can achieve that and also take care of your figure! The founder of the Free Electric hybrid bike, Manoj Bhargava, says that his invention uses mechanical energy in the most basic way in order to transform an hour of exercise into supplying rural household with energy for 24 hours. The mechanism is simple: when you pedals, a flywheel is put in action, which turns the generator and thus charging a battery. What better motivation to work out from now on than to power your own home without any costs whatsoever? Watch the video featured to see the bike in action.
Riiiiight.
That idea is not only ridiculous – it is impossible. Normal human metabolism produces heat at a basal metabolic rate of around 80 watts. During a bicycle race, an elite cyclist can produce close to 400 watts of mechanical power over an hour.
A regular person, who isn’t an elite muscular cyclist, might manage half that. The dead-giveaway is in the video itself, where you see the wattmeter displayed while the inventor is cycling peaking at about 274 watts:
Then there is the separate dead-giveaway shot of the voltmeter and ammeter:
From basic electricity, Power = Volts times amps (P=EI) Do the math: 12 volts x 10 amps = 120 watts.
So, at it’s best it might produce 400 watts for an hour is 0.4 kilowatt-hour. More likely the average person will produce 0.2 kilowatt-hour in one hour. At the 0.2 kWh rate, if you cycled 24 hours, you’d produce 4.8 kilowatt-hours
Look at your electric bill and note how many kilowatt-hours you used in a month, and then tell me you can keep up with that, especially in the summer when you need air-conditioning.
According to the EIA, in 2017, the average annual electricity consumption for a U.S. residential home customer was 10,399 kilowatt hours (kWh), an average of 867 kWh per month.
That works out to 28.9 kilowatt-hours per day. Compare that to the 4.8 kilowatt-hours per day you’d produce if you were able to cycle on this generator bike 24 hours a day.
The entire idea is laughable, much like the sure to fail (and it did) “solar roads” idea of three years ago. Even Treehugger called it a complete flop.
But given how innumerate the public is these days (math is hard), surely some eco-dupe will buy the generator bike thinking they can power their entire home and are “saving the planet” by “going green”.
Even if the idea was originally to help poor people who have no electricity, there’s this set of complications (from a commenter on the YouTube video):
Antediluvian Atheist
Uh, if people are too poor to afford electricity, theyA: Can’t afford this gizmo,
B: probably don’t have enough use for the electricity,
C: This thing cannot run a fridge or freezer, which is a major use,
D: And people THAT poor probably don’t have the spare calories.
All you need to do to make this work, and I am surprised it wasn’t mentioned, is to go down to your nearest Home Depot or Lowe’s and purchase the Acme Perpetual Motion Machine CXXIX. Simply follow the instructions, which you can download at the product’s website, attach it to the pedals and you are all set. This item can be purchased at a substantial discount during the upcoming President’s Day sale at these retailers. Be aware that they will probably go quickly so you may have to wait several weeks for delivery if you are not one of the first to purchase what they have in stock. You can also write a review of this product on Yelp! Good luck everybody.
It will work! Just pedal faster!
Reminds me of the solar powered dryer advertised in magazines.
The suckers that ordered one received a clothes line in the mail.
Whenever my “green” friends propose one of these harebrained schemes, I always make them watch the following video, where an Olympic track cyclist struggles to produce enough energy to toast one slice of bread. It’s literally unbelievable how much energy fossil fuels provide.
Reminds me of a competition between two fire departments in the 1930’s in San Fransisco IIRC. One unit was powered by a rocking type handpump, manned by 6 or 8 men, the other was powered by a steam engine. Both were horse drawn. You can guess which one won that competition.
The man is toast!
Also, the muscle shape and size in his legs suggests hes a sprint cyclist, not endurance. Two totally different muscle types. Ethiopian and Kenyan marathon runners are always skinny. Endurance cyclists, like in the Tour de France, aren’t that big as that in the legs.
Think there may be some Trenbolone Acetate into the quad muscles involved there.
Beat me to it!
That 274 counter looked to me like it was just counting something and was not measuring a rate, it was going up pretty constantly.
Maybe he had been pedalling for a few hours?
Electrical engineer here. Unless I missed it, nobody has mentioned how the 12v DC power is subsequently converted to 230v AC to power household items, which is the claim here. No mention of the inverter required, with the required wiring into the switchboard and the huge costs involved. Also a bit useless when an outage occurs as such generation (especially solar panels) is usually isolated from the house to prevent energy backfeeding onto the street lines and endangering line workers. Fine if you have 12v DC lighting installed in your house, but who does?
There was a wonderful show on British television a few years back, in which the producers asked a family to let them film them over a weekend day and then hooked up the house to a barn where 30 or 40 cyclists, plus some extras to step in if needed, did indeed power the house solely by muscle power. But it was a near thing. When the lady of the house dawdled about leaving the oven on, the cyclists came near losing out.
Just wait until Bernie Stalin is elected President. Diesel fuel will be banned, livestock will be extirpated, and the 50 million re-ed campers will get their exercise pulling plows. Hey, Party Commissars need to eat, too.
I am a cat4 cyclist, – approximately 70percentile of racing cyclists, top 5% of all cyclists & top 1%!of the general population in terms of health strength etc. I can hold 300 watts for barely 90 seconds, typical 2 hour ride I will average 185-190 watts .
The typical gym rat will struggle to average 130 watts for 45 minutes. Any guesses on the wattage put out of the General population ?
Probably less than 70 watts for an hour
I’d love to the calculation of the number of hours pedalling required to make the steel, aluminium and other materials used in construction of the device.
And an estimate of its lifetime.
Exactly my thought.
But the device has an obvious use.
Let the punishment fit the crime.
This would be just the thing for virtue-signalling, ignorant and hubristic politicians who advocate renewable energy policies to save the planet.
You stay in jail pedalling this thing until you produce enough energy to mine the ore, smelt it into steel and manufacture another device just like this one.
A variant, for lesser offences, might be to produce enough energy to power up Al Gore in the lifestyle to which he has become accustomed, for just one day.
I had a discussion on this ad on FB where I made a similar point without knowing the numbers.
Not only is it silly, but in my example of a family of four, they would have all have to bicycle constantly to produce the meager 5000 kVA hours per year average consumption of a British household. Since they would all be bicycling 24/7 they wouldn’t need much energy short of a light, but some cooling would be nice, since all that kinetic energy inevitably produces heat. (Presumably they would all bicycle in the same room). In addition to the cooling (1000watts) they would need a small staff to shop food and clean constantly. They would probably use about 4000 kVA hours per year to exist, so now we’re back at the original 5000 kVA hours per year average. Looking bad so far, and it won’t take long before you keel over from exhaustion even if you were eating and drinking constantly (expensive!). This has got to be irony.
Anthony,
The average person could barely crank out 100 watts for an hour, if that. Actually, the average casual cyclist could barely do it. You have to be a pretty solid cyclist to manage 200 watts for an hour. The elite time trialists who can crank out over 400 for an hour (or around 2/3 horse power!!), are few and far between.
Fred – See my comment above. I am a cat 4, I struggle to hold 300 watts for 90 seconds, My typical 2 hour ride will average 180-190 watts. My last race was 62 miles with a 24.5 mph finishing 8 secs behind 1st. My wattage on that race was only 145 (I was very efficient except the sprint finish).
The average cyclists will barely hold 130-150 watts, the average gym rat (steriod big muscle gym rate) might be able to hold 130-150 watts for 30 minutes. The average person 80-90 watts for 30-45 minutes.
So your comment is correct. Its ridiculus to think that this is a viable option. Though most of the warmist, struggle with their ideas due to their extreme tunnel vision.
Joe – We have to fix your training regimen. If you are riding 2 hours at 180-190 watts, then your Functional Threshold Power (FTP), which is your sustainable aerobic power, is at least 200 watts by definition. Power levels above FTP are more anaerobic and are eventually constrained chemically by accumulating lactates (incompletely burned sugars) that gums up the cellular machinery by slowing down the electron transport chain, clogging the proton pumps, and messing with the electrical gradient across the mitochondrian membrane that drives ATP Synthase. Plotting maximum power vs time yields a characteristic rapidly decaying curve (the product of Power and Time) that insects FTP at 60 minutes. The slow continued power decay below FTP for long duration rides is a symptom of an increasing fat/sugar fuel ratio. Sugar reserves run about 2,500 calories, fat reserves run +100,000 calories, fat requires 30% more oxygen to burn than sugar, and oxygen is constrained by lung size at VO2-max. Bonking happens when the sugar is gone and all you have left to burn is fat.
This Power vs Time curve has a few well-defined points. Peak Power Output is maximum power measured at five minutes, and is typically 3 times FTP, or for you about 600 watts. A 45 second sprint should be at least 4 times FTP, or for you 800 watts. I am a 100% fast-twitch muscle freak, so my power curve is steeper than most. I have good sprint power at 1300 watts as measured by both power-tap wheels and Quarg cranks at about 40mph at the finish line. But that sprint is paired with at crappy FTP level of 237 watts, for a ratio of 5.5:1. Everybody else I race with have ratios right around 4:1, but they all have FTPs from 280 to 320 watts. YOU should not be “struggling” to hold 300 watts for 90 seconds, as 600 watts should be easily obtainable based on your FTP. I suppose you could be at the opposite end of the muscle spectrum and be made of 100% slow-twitch fibers with a correspondingly flatter curve, but then you would be unable to contest the sprints at the end of the race.
This page includes a decent graphic of the power curve … https://roadcyclinguk.com/how-to/fitness-nutrition/six-things-need-know-anaerobic-capacity-cycling.html … and some reasonable training advice on linked pages.
You and Fred are absolutely correct in your “average person is less than 100 watts” estimates. When we perform our initial FTP tests on beginning riders, they rarely measure more than 90 watts. Professionals that can produce more than 400 watts for an hour are about six standard deviations better than average.
Yes I am well aware of my low wattage numbers. My ftp is 199 (the last time I measured). I will typically lose every bunch sprint by 6-8 seconds. However I am 63 and didnt start racing until age 60. I do need some coaching to get above this level I am stuck with.
I the typical crit race, my legs are perfectly happy coasting at 25 mph, but have trouble getting up to 32-35 for the final sprint when the rest of the field is at 35+
What defines human civilization? It is the harnessing of power sources that can do many times as much work as human effort alone. This is why the planet supports 7 billion humans, not 7 million. By NOT using energy sources above and beyond what we can create ourselves, we go back to Neolithic production levels-the stone age, along with such delightful issues like short life span, disease, starvation, a population 1/1,000 of what we support now, being at the mercy of nature etc.
For those that yearn to a return to such a simple life, I hope you have found yourself a really nice comfortable cave. Sorry-no internet, no running hot water, no cars, no malls, no mobile phone, no TV, no food available any time for almost no effort whatsoever, no travel beyond 40 miles on any given day. No refrigerator full of icy cold beer, no clean drinking water,…The list goes on.
The figures are clearly a load of rubbish
At Quora…Bjorn Lomborg demolishes this junk…
Bjorn Lomborg, cost-benefit, prioritization and order-of-magnitude
Updated April 12, 2016
Originally Answered: How much electricity does Manoj Bhargava’s Free Electric hybrid bike generate? And would an electricity generating gym be a viable business?…
“At Quora…Bjorn Lomborg demolishes this junk…”
The link for that is:
https://www.quora.com/How-much-electricity-does-Manoj-Bhargavas-Free-Electric-hybrid-bike-generate-Would-an-electricity-generating-gym-be-a-viable-business
(note: it is from 2016, and everything else I’ve seen in searches so far has been 2015 and 2016)
Why bring it up again now? Does the company still make and distribute these in India?
Was it accepted there or not? The company now makes portable solar powered lithium battery packs and portable solar panels, water purifiers, and composting fertilizer systems.
The bicycle power generator may be a bad idea. But don’t trash the inventor for something he never said.
He claimed it was for charging one cell phone, an LED light bulb, and a fan. When he said it would power a rural home, that was a rural home in India which was off the grid. Since then I think he has switched to using solar power.
It’s like when Sarah Palin was trashed for the seeing Russia comment which was actually made by Tina Fey on SNL.
The inventor is rich and his goal is to subsidize his products with his own money. Non-profit.
Improving energy, water, and health in the impoverished world. Noble goal. He is doing things to improve lives (positive actions) unlike Greta (negative talk).
“Electricity – it’s what created all the wealth in the world”
video and trailer at:
https://billionsinchange.com
Noble, yes.
Help, yes.
However, it is not a rational way forward. It is snail-pace, giving no realistic possibility to run sawmills, carpentry, cement fabrication, modern temperate class rooms, freezers, hospitals, etc.
For the work these Green gadgets do, they are extremely expensive. They are fine on a camping trip though.
You may find it hard to believe, but a similar contraption is displayed and tested every year at the Ljubljana Faculty of Electrotechnic, to give prospective students an idea of how much energy we use, and how much we can generate by muscle power. Candidates are offered to power such a bicycle for 15 minutes and they will be paid the energy they generate times 96, i.e., as if they had generated the same power for 24 hours. After the sweaty candidate completes his 15 minutes toil, a large locked box is opened with great show to pay him for his effort – which is not even enough to buy him a beer.
The fact is that a person of average fitness can barely generate 100 Watts for 3 minutes, 150 max if he or she is young. A highly trained cyclist can generate about 600 Watts for 6 minutes. Using these experimentally derived figures you can calculate how this bicycle would be effective at powering your home.
But they are sure to sucker some people. As W.C. Fields said “It Is morally wrong to let the sucker keep his money!”
P.S.: a similar bike is used in heart stress tests, the magnetic brake is progressively increased from 50 W to 600 W in one minute intervals. The testing is always attended by a cardiologist and a trained nurse because it happens quite frequently that the tested patient collapses on the bike.
Bringing facts into the discussion.
How dare you!
“… given how innumerate the public is these days …”!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/01/27/dc-solar-owners-plead-guilty-to-largest-ponzi-scheme-in-eastern-california-history/
Another give-away is the 12V car battery, which reminds me of the UK in the seventies and the 3-day week. We had to rely on the spare car battery to give us a few hours of candle-equivalent light. Looks like we’re headed back there.
Well, that was stupid. After all, humans produce CO2 too. If I’m biking I produce ca. 10g of CO2 per km. Pretty good, isn’t it? After all cars produce 100-200g of CO2 for the same distance. But if you think deeper, than the food must be produced and brought to you by the fossil fuels. Even if you eat potatoes the total will be as high as 100g – basically the same as cars. And with meat you can heat 1kg of CO2. I’m not saying CO2 is harmful – it’s not, but the notion that cars are dirtier than muscle work is beyond stupid.
Or just keep using the grid supply.
Remember the pedal powered two way radios that got the flying doctor service going in Australia?
https://www.facebook.com/royalflyingdoctorservice/videos/762951200889071/
Whilst the idea is comical, the average electrical consumption quoted is a bit high if you were to actually put some effort into cutting back. My off grid house runs on 3 kWh per day (no electrical heating apart from the toaster and microwave), and my house in town uses 6kWh/day, again all heating is gas, not electricity, except for the kettle etc, but I do have aircon.
I could reduce my off grid usage by about 30% if I switched the satellite internet off overnight
[Bernie]If electricity prices were just100 times more expensive, this would be a great way to produce power. I can help with that]
The reason the industrial revolution was able to happen was because labour was decoupled from the means of production by steam power for the first time, and allowed humans to create the massive additional energy above that the carbohydrate power of humans and draft animals could deliver, plus a bit of weak intermittent wind and water mill power. I am unsure of the umbers but i read the energy we use per person is roughly equivalent to 24 servants, so we all live like Lords. But much better prtected from nature. Cretainly better than burning firewood we collected, as Africans still have to, and are forced to live the lives this amount of enrgy use allows.
AS well as the energy multiplier, chemistry allowed farmers to match the resulting population growth the economy could now support with food, massively raising output pr acre. The greens don’t like either of these basic underpinnings of modern developed society, w/o which it cannot exist.
I am keen we should establish an alternative environment for greens who want to be fossil and nuclear free. Their own bit of the World to live on w/o the power of oil, coal, gas and nuclear power, where they manufacture all their own consumables necessary for life.
Perhaps they could have treadmills like this to drive their means of production when there is no wind or water power available for whatever reason? Even the prisons stopped using those for energy conversion when steam came along. But that’s about the level of mental development of people who fall for this stuff.