I spend hours each week on an elliptical exercise machine at my gym. Many a time I feel bad about it - not burning up the calories or keeping my heart and lungs healthy, but at the waste of electricity. The big machines, standing in a row under the fluorescent lights of my low-rent gym, are all plugged into the floor. I watch their electronic read-outs of my heart rate and speed. Each machine has a little tv attached to it which I don't watch, but then again, I'm listening to my battery-powered ipod while I work out.
So I was delighted to read that at The University of Oregon in Eugene, they have rigged up their elipitical machines so that the person doing the exercise is actually generating power. The power from each elliptical goes through a converter that turns DC into AC and then allows it to flow into the grid.
What a great concept! Mind you, it's not a huge amount of power. The school estimates that 3000 peple a day on 20 machines would generate 6000 kilowatt hours a year, enough to power one small energy-efficient house. Looked at a different way, a typical 30-minute workout on one machine generates enough electricity to run a laptop for an hour, or a compact fluorescent light bulb for 2 1/2 hours.
Evidently there are about 30,000 health clubs in this country. If every gym in America could figure out how to retrofit their exercise machines, it would at least make a dent in energy consumption. And I wouldn't feel quite so much like I was going nowhere every time I climb onto one of these babies.
Hey, this has always been one of my big ideas too! SO cool that someone has figured it out!
Posted by: Your Roomie | May 22, 2009 at 08:42 AM