Treadmills and electric cars

 

hm,just upgraded our TV pkg yesterday..2 fancy HD boxes, PVR,2 PODs 60x faster cable...

STILL nothing to watch on the idiot box.........sigh

hmm, treadmill can make about 1HP, say 750 watts..maybe 500 watts per HOUR...

wonder how long a person would have to be on it to recharge a Tesla battery or even a Leaf one ????

 I don't think you could get enough pieces in or have a big enough building to do it.

Funny thing, gyms.  Watch the parking lot and the fistfights and road rage over who gets the parking  spot closest to the door.  If they parked far away and walked to the gym, they wouldn't need the gym!

Yeah, treadmills are 'powered' not 'taking power from', so they won't run a TV set.  A modern TV though, MIGHT be within reach of a person on a generator... LED TVs being MUCH more energy efficient than an old CRT type color set, they'll be within reach, as long as the human is in respectable shape.

When I was younger, I was on a performance tester regularly.  A bicycle performance tester is essentially a human dynomometer, and there's a myriad of sensors going, because power output at any given moment isn't the 'whole story'... but team trainers use the tester to get a baseline for each rider's abilities, and look for ways to improve each team member's performance.  The tester has several indication outputs:

Power (in watts)

Pedaling Cadence:  the speed of the crankshaft

Output (in watts... as being generated at the wheel output)

    >but that doesn't tell the whole story.

Heart rate and blood pressure

Aspiration rate and volume

Blood oxygen level.

The first number signifies what the power flow at THAT INSTANT is.  The generator is developing a certain number of volts, and a certain quantity of amperes, and volts x amperes = watts.  746 watts = 1 horsepower, or if you want a conversion to thermal units,  1 horsepower is 2544btu

Pedal Cadence is basically like crankshaft RPM of an engine.  An athlete's leg geometry, and their musculature determines what pedaling cadence they're most efficient, and at what cadence they'll develop the most power.

---Peak efficiency, and peak power, frequently do NOT occur at the same cadence!!!

Heart rate, blood pressure aspiration rate and volume, blood oxygen level all add up to what is referred to as VO2 MAX... meaning, the athlete's body's ability to bring in oxygen to the bloodstream, and also, move carbon dioxide OUT.  It also has a direct impact on the ability of the athlete's blood to transport NADPH (basically, the fuel that muscles use to operate) and also, the ability of the athlete's circulatory system to move lactic acid and other waste byproducts OUT of the muscles.  We can drive our bodies to exceed our respiratory and circulatory systems, but once we've hit a certain point, we have to stop to catch up.  In a machinery context, we've exceeded 'our duty cycle'.

When I was tested (in my mid '20's), I was capable of generating a PEAK of something like 2200W for under 10 seconds' duration - That's roughly the equivalent of about 3hp.  I could HOLD 1200w for about 35 seconds, or 700w for 1 minute 15 seconds... after those incidences, my capacity fell off drastically, with the longer durations being oxygen debt... aka 'beyond my VO2max'.

But I could hold just under 200w continuously for a 4 hour road race... as long as I had enough water, and ambient temperature was below 76 degrees.

Here's olympic sprinter Robert Forsteman powering a toaster...

In my observation, He would have done much better, had the gearing been a bit lower- his pedaling cadence needed to be higher to take best advantage of his abilities.