Turn Sweat into Power-Grid Energy- is it Practical?

Workout cycle from PlugOut, a supplier of exercise equipment that turns your sweat into electricity.

The last time I was at the gym walking on the treadmill, I looked around and saw dozens of people sweating away, running, climbing stairs and pedaling bikes, all under the bright lights and cooling air conditioner breeze. And I thought, wouldn’t it be great to turn all this sweat energy into electricity that could power the gym and maybe return something to the grid?

We could turn gyms into power plants. You pay the gym and they sell your sweat-generated electricity to the power grid. I wasn’t  the first person to have this brilliant idea. There are now dozens of gyms around the US that have implemented this idea and a number of vendors who supply modifications to existing gym equipment that convert your sweat into electricity.

But, the value is not in the electricity generated, it’s in the idea behind it. Just put in the numbers.

You can buy from the Bicycle Sports Shop, among others, a sensor that will measure the power you expend in riding a bike. They offer a handy table with a few numbers for the typical power that a human can generate.

Two numbers are of interest. The peak power is the average power over a 1 minute interval of sprinting. The functional threshold is the average power that can be sustained over a 1 hour period. These are power per kilogram of body weight. You take your weight in pounds and divide by 2.2 to get your weight in kilograms.

Suppose you weight 220 pounds. This is 100 kg. A trained athlete can generate about 6 watts/kg x 100 ~ 600 watts over an hour. One of us mere mortals could generate about 200 watts, or about 0.2 kilowatts of power. For reference, this is about 1/4 horsepower.

Energy costs around the US vary but a reasonable starting place is about $0.1 per kW-hour, or 1 cent per 100 watt-hours of energy.

This means that a person working out might be able to generate about 200 watt-hours of energy in an hour of hard and steady workout at the value of 2 cents. If you have a room of 50 people all sweating for an hour, the value generated would be about $1.

This revenue stream is just not a viable business plan. However, if you had a choice between going to two different clubs, one that you just sweated at, and one at which you sweated, but knew that each drop of precious sweat generated some, even tiny amount of electricity that was put to good use, which club would you want to go to?

When competition between gyms becomes more fierce, small differentiators can be large deciding factors. I think the clubs that offer to turn your sweat into generated electricity will become more popular, even though the amount of electricity generated is trivial. It would be about enough to power the LCD screen of the TV you watch.

The ROI for a gym is not in the revenue generated by the electricity generated, but in the additional number of user who would be attracted to sign up if they knew their energy was being put to good use.

In addition, an exercise machine set up to generate electrical power is also instrumented to display the power generated. This is yet another metric that you can use for feedback to help you feel better about your workout.

And after all, isn’t a large part of working out about feeling better about yourself?

Electrical power generating gyms will not become the power plants of the Matrix anytime soon, but they will make you feel a little better.

Top Shelf Astronomy 201 Courses

Looking for an astronomy class a little beyond the basics, but not requiring a PhD and taught by the experts? Here are four recommendations that are “out of this world.”

 

Hacking a Cat Box to Last Two Weeks Between Emptying

We have three cats. Two of them, 9 year old males, are at least 15 pounds and the third, a 2 year old female, that weights only 8 pounds, eats (and poops) like she is 15 pounds.

That’s a lot of cat litter each day that needs disposal. Ideally, I want an automatic cat box that I don’t have to clean out for weeks at a time, doesn’t make a mess, never needs maintenance and the cats can use effortlessly. I accept the fact that I will have to add kitty litter every so often.

University Astronomy 101 in Your Pocket

Now that you have discovered how much you love astronomy, do you regret not paying attention in your college classes, or kick yourself for not even taking an Astronomy class when you had the chance?

It’s not too late. In fact, you can listen and view Astronomy 101 classes from some of the top universities or listen to invited lectures by the scientists who are making the great discoveries we read about each day. Best of all, it’s completely free, and you can take it with you on your iPod or iPhone. A new world of learning is available to you at iTunesU.

All you need is a computer and internet access. Download Apple’s completely free iTunes program for the Mac or the PC. Go to the iTunes store and click on iTunesU listed on the left hand menu.

iPhone Favorite Apps: AT&T Navigator

Whenever I’ve rented a car in the past 8 years, I’ve always gotten a gps navigator. I’ve become dependent on it as an essential tool to get around in a new city.

Four years ago, when Verizon came out with VZ Navigator, I thought this was great. It was exactly the same turn by turn voice navigation as the dedicated navigators, like from Garmin, but you carried it around with you.

When I switched to the iPhone, I tried out a number of the navigator features and found the AT&T Navigator to be the best. It uses real time information feeds, so does require 3G network access. However, it also gives traffic update reports and, of course, allows local search for facilities nearby.

I use it locally to find the nearest Starbuck, and to check out new restaurants when I am looking for inspiration.

The turn by turn voice directions are as good or better than other navigators and I like the posting of the ETA to my destination. This is a “First Screen” app for me.

Three Microsoft Windows Products I Actually Like

The first computer I bought with my own money was a Mac. It was love at first sight. I became a “pod” person. Back in 1985, it was like all of us Mac fans shared this secret. We knew how “insanely great” the Mac was, but those not part of our secret society didn’t have a clue.

When I met a stranger in my travels who had a Mac with them, we would exchange a smile and know exactly what it meant.

Screen Capture for an iPhone

There is a simple way of taking a snap shot picture of whatever is currently displayed on the iPhone screen. It is described in the iPhone help files under the camera.

To record the screen, press the top off-on button at the same time as the home button, the round depression at the bottom center of the iPhone.

A copy of whatever is on the screen at the time is then sent to the camera roll collection of photos which can be viewed with the photo tool or downloaded from the iPhone like any photo.

This means that if I am viewing a map, or directions, or a note, or even a recorded lecture and want to take a snapshot, it’s a simple matter of clicking the two buttons simultaneously and I have an instant record.

Trick to move off-screen windows back on screen

I have multiple monitors on my various computers. If I open and save applications with one monitor configuration, and then change the monitor configuration, or move that application to a computer with a different monitor configuration, I have a problem when I try to open that application again.

The window in which it opens is off the screen and I am unable to see it to even move it back on screen.

I have found a simple trick that works very effectively to find the hidden window and move it back on screen.

If I have an application that opens a window off screen, here is what I do it bring it on screen:

1. press alt-tab repeatedly until the hidden window is highlighted in the alt window
2. press the windows icon button, the shift key and the right arrow to move the highlighted window into the visible monitor

This little trick has saved me endless hours of frustration and works whenever a window is fully or partially off screen and needs to be repositioned.

Fix for some Windows 7 compatibility problems

I hated Vista and actually downgraded two computers from Vista to XP. Windows 7 is a huge improvement, and I am in the process of migrating all my computers to this new operating system.

As I reinstall old programs, especially those I use for astronomy and astrophotography, I find that some of them do not install correctly under Windows 7. I learned a simple fix that sometimes works. It was from discussion with the folks at Starry Night Education, who create a really wonderful planetarium software tool that I use to control my telescope.

Here’s the trick that sometimes works. If a software tool does not install correctly in Windows 7, then:

Single-handed Camper Hitch Hook-up

When you are all alone in the middle of the wilderness, how do you hook-up a camper to your car’s hitching ball?

If the camper is not secured, you will be stranded in the middle of nowhere. I found a simple method, using a web cam dangling from the back of the car and viewing its image of the hitching post on my laptop resting on the front seat.

I used to camp in my tent when I visited the dark sky site of the Astronomical Society of Kansas City, in Butler , MO. While this was cheap, it was always a bit of a hassle, both in the set up and the tear down.

Life Long Learning at Your Fingertips

I’ve never given up my thirst for learning more about what interests me in the world. I went to school in Cambridge, MA, where there are 30 large universities in the area, each with weekly talks and seminars. I used to hop from seminar  to seminar, eating the free cookies and cakes and listening to the distinguished visitors from around the world.

With the web and my iPod, I can access the same quality speakers who are expert on almost any subject imaginable, but with the convenience of my schedule. I’ve found three important sources for incredibly great learning.