Transforming his mother's house into his laboratory, he began tearing the equipment apart. In 2007, Hudson Harr, then a 21-year-old graduate of the University of Florida with degrees in electrical and mechanical engineering, spent all the money he had amassing a collection of used elliptical machines and electrical parts.
Since then, three companies in the United States have been working hard to market the technology, each taking a slightly different approach.
#POWER TO THE PEOPLE MACHINES GENERATOR#
“The industrial engineer in me said, 'What a waste! There's got to be a way to capture and use this energy.' ”Īlthough the basic idea of attaching a generator to exercise equipment is many decades old, the press started lavishing attention on this concept four years ago, after a Hong Kong gym called California Fitness rigged 18 exercise machines to charge a battery and power fluorescent lights. “Stationary bikes create resistance, and through this friction, heat is produced,” says Jay Whelan, cofounder of the Green Revolution, in Ridgefield, Conn., the company that converted the spinning bikes at the NYSC in Manhattan. And with some 30 000 gyms in the United States, that would mean millions of machines-and many more in people's homes-whose combined energy would then be appreciable. They claim it's only a matter of time until every exercise machine comes equipped with a generator.
#POWER TO THE PEOPLE MACHINES FREE#
So don't expect that fitness enthusiasts pedaling stationary bikes are going to free the United States from its addiction to fossil fuels.īackers of the technology respond by comparing the current cost of these machines with that of technologies like compact fluorescent bulbs or solar and wind power, which many people doubted would ever take off. What's more, the energy output of these machines is so low that the environmental benefits they provide are scant. So a gym might have to wait decades to recover the money it spent converting its exercise machines to generate electricity. The energy output from a single exercise machine is quite small: Unless you're Lance Armstrong, you might be able to power a ceiling fan while spinning a stationary bike, but not much more. For one thing, the economics aren't very enticing. The reality, though, is that this technology faces major hurdles before it can go mainstream. These companies have already converted several hundred machines at dozens of U.S. At least three start-ups in the United States are now selling equipment to retrofit aerobic machines-stationary bicycles, elliptical trainers, and steppers-into electricity-generating gear. For these gym-goers, it's not just about their cardio fitness their sweat is helping to make the planet a bit greener.īy adopting power-producing exercise machines in this way, gyms can promote themselves as environmentally friendly and also reduce their electric bills. The box is a compact generator that converts the motion of the wheels into electricity, which is then fed into the power grid, offsetting some of the club's energy use.
Look closely and you'll notice something unusual about this workout: Each of the bikes is attached to a black box with wires running out of it. Walk into a spinning class at the New York Sports Clubs' facility on Eighth Avenue and West 23rd Street in Manhattan and you'll find 20 sweaty people furiously pedaling their stationary bikes.
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