[Quinny]

Just caught the end of a BBC program where they had a house powered by about 100 cyclists. A family of 4 then spent a normal day in the house and the cyclists had to keep up with their energy demands. They were pedalling non-stop all day and really struggled to meet demand, which wasn't particularly excessive. The also identified the energy inputs in calories, and digestive biscuits. Pity I missed most of the details, but it might be on I player later.

[PrestonSturges]

Sounds about right if person might make 100 watts for a short time, total of 10,000 watts

[frankthetank]

I want to see this. Sounds interesting. I'll have to look for a link.

[frankthetank]

found it
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8392451.stm

[shortonsense]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('frankthetank', 'f')ound it
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8392451.stm

[SeaGypsy]

http://www.nimbingoodtimes.com/archive/ ... 07wp15.pdf

Peter Pedals is probably Australia's premier exponent of pedal power, as well as founder of the Rainbow Power Company in Nimbin. In this article he goes into some detail about conversion and differing systems. he has also built a lot of machines based on flywheels and pedal power. The idea is to use a standard bicycle gear system to power up a large mass concrete and steel flywheel then 'dump' the energy onto a shaft by way of a clutch, he found go cart clutches ideal for this operation. The guy is a real wealth of knowlege on human power generation, efficiency and conversion technology. I highly recommend anyone really interested spend some time googling Peter.

[Quinny]

Electric showers are very common and relatively efficient. No storage losses. I pity the cyclists if the guy had run a bath! What sort of Solar setup would be needed to duplicate the cyclists and power the house as we normally use it in a day?

In the programme they showed the equivalent oil and coal that would be needed It really illustrates the power of fossil fuels in quite a scary way.$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('shortonsense', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('frankthetank', 'f')ound it link

[shortonsense]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Quinny', 'E')lectric showers are very common and relatively efficient. No storage losses. I pity the cyclists if the guy had run a bath!

What sort of Solar setup would be needed to duplicate the cyclists and power the house as we normally use it in a day?

[dinopello]

That is a most awesome show ! Very instructive about energy slaves. Those poor cyclists would be dead trying to power a typical american household I imagine. Great way to raise conciousness though.

[PrestonSturges]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dinopello', 'T')hat is a most awesome show ! Very instructive about energy slaves. Those poor cyclists would be dead trying to power a typical american household I imagine. Great way to raise conciousness though.

[Quinny]

What area would a system like this cover?$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('shortonsense', 'W')ell, lets see. I use perhaps 700 kwh in a month, so lets call it 23 kwh per day. I run off to a cute little tool like this one: --snip--
And my needs will change when I collect, say, a Volt and it needs charging, transferring solar power to a battery, to later use to charge another battery in the car, I'm not sure that works well without a larger system, and sounds redundant, but I'm now replacing at least double my electricity costs because I'll stop buying gasoline, so even if I scale the system to a full $100G's, I'm now saving 3 times more because I knock gasoline useage out of the loop as well.

[dorlomin]

And how much fossil fuel would be required to feed the cyclists!

[Quinny]

Don't know about ff,but they did actually say how many digestive biscuits.

Anyone know the area required for the system described by short?

[yesplease]

About 1700ft^2. Course, a 20kW system would produce about 2000kWh/month in Northern Maine, so it looks like short messed up the energy calculation unless he meant to say he uses ~2000kWh/month, not ~700kWh/month. Generally speaking, about (A little less technically) one square foot per kWh per month is needed. At the U.S. average for electricity consumption a household would need ~1000ft^2 of panels. Toss an EV or PHEV car in at ~15,000 miles/year and that adds another ~300kWh/month.