Mr. Electricity is your guide to saving energy in your home.
We're recommended by the government of Berks County, PA.
Related sites:
Watt Watt. News about efficiency and conservation, written by readers of the site.
Home Power Magazine. All about renewable energy for the home.
Thin House. Blog about a family committed to cutting its energy use by 80%.
No-Impact Man. Blog about a family striving to have no net impact. (i.e., What little they use, they offset.) Inspirational.
Off-Grid. News and resources about living without being connected to a utility company.
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Generating
electricity with a bicycle
Yes, you can make energy with a bicycle. But it's
unlikely to save you any money, because it generates such a
small amount of electricity versus the cost of the setup.
And it might not even be green energy, once you consider the
energy that's used to produce your fuel (food).
A typical bike generator can produce 100 watts. If
you pedal for an hour a day, 30 days a month, that's (30 x
100=) 3000 watt-hours, or 3 kWh. Since the average cost of
U.S. electricity is 12¢/kWh, that one month of pedaling
saves you $0.36. Congratulations. If the system cost $400,
it would take only 93 years to pay for itself.
And that's before we consider the cost of food. If
you're overweight, like most Americans, then you can
consider your biking energy "free" since you could be
burning fat. Likewise, if you ride the exercycle instead of
doing some other kind of exercise that you were going to do
anyway, then the cost of your energy is also free. But if
you're not overweight and not exercycling instead of some
other exercise, then you'll be buying more food to fuel your
effort. Since it takes about 1
calorie to produce 1 watt-hour of electricity, your
month of pedaling would require 3000 calories. With the
cheapest food you can buy, oil or flour, you're looking at
$0.85 to create $0.36 of electricity. Some savings. Prepared
foods are even worse: Figure $5.41 for Cheerios, $6.15 for
bananas, or $22.22 for Big Macs.
But money aside, isn't bicycle power a form of green
energy? The answer is that it depends on where you get
your calories. Just as with the money costs, if you're
overweight or exercycling instead of other exercise, then
yes, the (piddling amount of) energy you create is indeed
green. But if you're already at a decent weight and not
substituting for some other kind of exercise, then you're
going to eat more food to power your effort, and the
pollution caused to produce that food is more than the
pollution saved by creating your own electric. 3000 extra
calories from what a typical American eats will make 30
lbs. of CO2e, or 15 lbs. for a vegan. The
energy from the power plant makes only about 5 lbs. of
CO2e by comparison.
(sources)
Related sites
Last update: May
2009
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