4 ms·

This might be feasible in a setting with multiple people providing power, but I'm not sure how usable it would be with just one person. As a rough rule of thum

This might be feasible in a setting with multiple people providing power, but I'm not sure how usable it would be with just one person. As a rough rule of thumb, an average person riding a a bike at about 15 km/h would be using 30-40 watts of power. Let's assume that this cooking device would be twice as hard to pedal. If it converted your pedaling with 100% efficiency—which it certainly wouldn't—it would give you a peak output of 80 watts of power. In that case, you'd still only get about 80 Watt-hours of energy after 1 hour of pedaling. For context, it takes about 90 watt-hours of energy to boil 1 litre of water, so you'd be pedaling over an hour to boil it. In fact, that's ignoring the rate at which the water is dissipating heat out into the air. You might not even get it to boil at all. For this to work at all, you'd need many sets of pedals to allow multiple people to put energy in. With 10 people pedaling in the above scenario you'd be getting 800 watts, which would be usable for a lot of different types of cooking.

amelius 4y ago
One of the comments addresses this too: > A hot plate typically draws 1000 to 1400 watts. > A Tour de France cyclist typically generates 300 to 350 watts. Joe Average on a bicycle will go over 150 watts only in short bursts. > (And remember: muscles generate heat, too - and they're only 18-25% efficient. So the power peddler will be heating up, but won't have the cyclist's breeze cooling their body down... ) > -- lurch, Jun 07 2015
- jeffalyanak 4y ago
  Something to keep in mind is that a hotplate or inductive cooktop may not need to run at full duty cycle depending on the heat dissipation of the materials involved and the setpoint of the themrostat or temperature probe. It may be pulling its maximum rated power while it comes up to temperature, but it'll be regulated by some sort of thermostat. Once it's at temperature the rate of heat dissipation of the hob, pan, and even the ingredients themselves will affect how soon it'll drop below the threshold and power draw will resume. A system with a lower maximum power would still work, but it would be running at a higher duty cycle to maintain the same temperature. It would take longer to get to the set temperature in the first place and slower to bring it back to temperature whenever the temperature drops. That said, I'm pretty confident that 700-800 watts would be useful for many types of cooking and I think it's achievable with a dozen or so people pedaling.
- toss1 4y ago
  Olympic cyclist working to toast a slice of bread. Insanely impressive effort by a maximally trained professional, and he's definitely toasted. This is like a cartoon technology — the general concept is right, but the scale is just waay off... Anyway, worth the look https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4O5voOCqAQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4O5voOCqAQ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a15889/bike-racer-toaster-challenge/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a15889/bike-...
agumonkey 4y ago
I want to assemble a gym club with a few rows of bike and suck up the mechanical energy production to power some stuff. People pay clubs and then pay to power machines to then waste energy. Seems cosmically absurd to me.
- jeffalyanak 4y ago
  Yes! I've thought about that exact same thing! It would be a cool marketing gimmick, too. Call the gym something like "Watt's Gym", and add card readers to each machine so people can track their total produced killowatt-hours. The actual amount of energy generated would still be pretty small, but it would be a fun gimmick to motivate people. You could have an app and little screens showing the total energy that you generated this session or month, and see how much energy you contributed to the total for the whole gym that period. Heck, an average workout could generate maybe 0.03-0.04kWh and if the gym was popular enough that would add up to a portion of the electricity used by the facility. Those savings could even be passed on to the members with a reward system of some type, which also works as a marketing/motivational gimmick.
  - agumonkey 4y ago
    The thing would be to have a global counter per row or room, 0.04kWh seems ridiculous but if you get 10-20 people putting 1kW it starts to get impressive. I also wanted to couple that to shelter so homeless people could warm up food or water etc. You get free sport and they get a slightly better life.. ps: if you ever set something like that up, please share the plans :)
    - alexvoda 4y ago
      Just a small step towards turning humans into batteries like in the Matrix.
CobaltFire 4y ago
I’m comically out of shape at this time (I’m also not a big guy) and output over 100w watts for an entire hour; 80 seems remarkably low. Then again, I’m pushing far faster than 15km/h. This is per my trainer, which is supposedly quite accurate.
- jeffalyanak 4y ago
  Yeah, 80 watts was just an arbitrary doubling of a rough estimate for average cruising on a bike. That said, I think it's still somewhat reasonable to do the calculations below the level of a workout because not everyone is going to want to do a high intensity workout every time they want to cook something.
alexvoda 4y ago
Peddaling would obviously be silly. But hook it up to a water wheel and it sounds plausible in a future retro aesthetic.
- jeffalyanak 4y ago
  Oh yeah, even a micro hydroelectric generator can easily do 500 watts continuously, so add a bank of batteries—maybe one made of recycled li-ions—and you could easily store enough energy to run an induction top for all your daily meals.

amelius 4y ago

One of the comments addresses this too: > A hot plate typically draws 1000 to 1400 watts. > A Tour de France cyclist typically generates 300 to 350 watts. Joe Average on a bicycle will go over 150 watts only in short bursts. > (And remember: muscles generate heat, too - and they're only 18-25% efficient. So the power peddler will be heating up, but won't have the cyclist's breeze cooling their body down... ) > -- lurch, Jun 07 2015

jeffalyanak 4y ago
Something to keep in mind is that a hotplate or inductive cooktop may not need to run at full duty cycle depending on the heat dissipation of the materials involved and the setpoint of the themrostat or temperature probe. It may be pulling its maximum rated power while it comes up to temperature, but it'll be regulated by some sort of thermostat. Once it's at temperature the rate of heat dissipation of the hob, pan, and even the ingredients themselves will affect how soon it'll drop below the threshold and power draw will resume. A system with a lower maximum power would still work, but it would be running at a higher duty cycle to maintain the same temperature. It would take longer to get to the set temperature in the first place and slower to bring it back to temperature whenever the temperature drops. That said, I'm pretty confident that 700-800 watts would be useful for many types of cooking and I think it's achievable with a dozen or so people pedaling.
toss1 4y ago
Olympic cyclist working to toast a slice of bread. Insanely impressive effort by a maximally trained professional, and he's definitely toasted. This is like a cartoon technology — the general concept is right, but the scale is just waay off... Anyway, worth the look https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4O5voOCqAQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4O5voOCqAQ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a15889/bike-racer-toaster-challenge/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a15889/bike-...

agumonkey 4y ago

I want to assemble a gym club with a few rows of bike and suck up the mechanical energy production to power some stuff. People pay clubs and then pay to power machines to then waste energy. Seems cosmically absurd to me.

jeffalyanak 4y ago
Yes! I've thought about that exact same thing! It would be a cool marketing gimmick, too. Call the gym something like "Watt's Gym", and add card readers to each machine so people can track their total produced killowatt-hours. The actual amount of energy generated would still be pretty small, but it would be a fun gimmick to motivate people. You could have an app and little screens showing the total energy that you generated this session or month, and see how much energy you contributed to the total for the whole gym that period. Heck, an average workout could generate maybe 0.03-0.04kWh and if the gym was popular enough that would add up to a portion of the electricity used by the facility. Those savings could even be passed on to the members with a reward system of some type, which also works as a marketing/motivational gimmick.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  The thing would be to have a global counter per row or room, 0.04kWh seems ridiculous but if you get 10-20 people putting 1kW it starts to get impressive. I also wanted to couple that to shelter so homeless people could warm up food or water etc. You get free sport and they get a slightly better life.. ps: if you ever set something like that up, please share the plans :)
  - alexvoda 4y ago
    Just a small step towards turning humans into batteries like in the Matrix.

CobaltFire 4y ago

I’m comically out of shape at this time (I’m also not a big guy) and output over 100w watts for an entire hour; 80 seems remarkably low. Then again, I’m pushing far faster than 15km/h. This is per my trainer, which is supposedly quite accurate.

jeffalyanak 4y ago
Yeah, 80 watts was just an arbitrary doubling of a rough estimate for average cruising on a bike. That said, I think it's still somewhat reasonable to do the calculations below the level of a workout because not everyone is going to want to do a high intensity workout every time they want to cook something.

alexvoda 4y ago

Peddaling would obviously be silly. But hook it up to a water wheel and it sounds plausible in a future retro aesthetic.

jeffalyanak 4y ago
Oh yeah, even a micro hydroelectric generator can easily do 500 watts continuously, so add a bank of batteries—maybe one made of recycled li-ions—and you could easily store enough energy to run an induction top for all your daily meals.