Can Exercise equipment be used to generate electricity?
A lot of the aerobic equipment at the gym creates it's own electric current for the displays. Why can't this be wired into the system to assist with the electricity the gym uses?
While it could be done, it would probably take a hundred years to pay back the investment in the electric machinery it would take to recoup any energy from exercisers. Let's think it through…
A person exercising fairly hard can generate perhaps 300 Watts averaged over an hour. Lets say your generator is 70% efficient. That means 200 Watts per treadmill or bicycle – perhaps if there are 50 machines there are only 30% (15) being used at a time so 15 times 200 equals 3000Watts. 3000W*1 hour is 3kW hours which costs about $0.25 (a quarter) So your exercise generator system makes you $4.00 per day, assuming that 30% of the machines are in use 16 hours per day (which is really optimistic) Your system would make the bikes or treadmills more expensive and you would need to install equipment to be able to use that energy, lets optimistically say that adds an extra $100000 for 50 special bikes/treadmills and a battery inverter system and all the necessary wiring, etc… So it would take 25000 days or 68 years to pay back the added cost of machinery…based on the assumptions I made.
You can make different assumptions and write a report on it 
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May 17, 2009 - 6:50 am
it certainly could be – you'd have to condition the power – but it could be done
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May 17, 2009 - 7:17 am
Yes, it could but the problem is that not nearly enough electricity would be aquired unless you have a TON of equipment. The machines themselves need power, so perhaps this could be used to reduce the bill but air conditioning, heating, lighting, etc would require more energy.
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May 17, 2009 - 7:50 am
It can be done.
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May 17, 2009 - 8:20 am
It could, but it would barely generate enough power to charge your iPod.
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May 17, 2009 - 8:28 am
While it could be done, it would probably take a hundred years to pay back the investment in the electric machinery it would take to recoup any energy from exercisers. Let's think it through…
A person exercising fairly hard can generate perhaps 300 Watts averaged over an hour. Lets say your generator is 70% efficient. That means 200 Watts per treadmill or bicycle – perhaps if there are 50 machines there are only 30% (15) being used at a time so 15 times 200 equals 3000Watts. 3000W*1 hour is 3kW hours which costs about $0.25 (a quarter) So your exercise generator system makes you $4.00 per day, assuming that 30% of the machines are in use 16 hours per day (which is really optimistic) Your system would make the bikes or treadmills more expensive and you would need to install equipment to be able to use that energy, lets optimistically say that adds an extra $100000 for 50 special bikes/treadmills and a battery inverter system and all the necessary wiring, etc… So it would take 25000 days or 68 years to pay back the added cost of machinery…based on the assumptions I made.
You can make different assumptions and write a report on it
References :