Bike Generators

[Strang]

A good way to create electricity would be using a bike generator. All you need is a bike, something to hold the bike in place, a belt and a generator designed for it. To create electricity all you would need to do it ride it. You could connect the generator to something via extension cables. This would be a very quiet source of energy, but it would make you tired. You would also have to use the bike for a while to create enough electricity to power something.

 

Most Simple Design

 

 

More complicated but better design

 

 

 

[raymond]

I remember a game where they used slaves at a powerstation for riding those bikes to produce electricity. I think it was one of those fallout clones =/

[Impetiso]

I'm not sure if i'm taking the point of the idea. I mean, why would you ride a bike and get tired yourself when you can build a water mill using the same principle but using water instead of your energy?

 

 

I remember a game where they used slaves at a powerstation for riding those bikes to produce electricity. I think it was one of those fallout clones =/

Well, you can use zombies here

[Strang]

In the long run water mill are better sources of power, but it would take lots of resources and time to make them

[Impetiso]

I was thinking in a smaller version: 2 buckets, 2 planks and the generator. It could be made in almost the same space than the bike, you don't need huge amounts of water (the water of a bucket fills the other bucket), and it requires someone to use it in order to produce electricity but doesn't require a great phisical work.

 

But then i think that, in the other hand, bike generetor would give xp in sprinting, and a safe way to get electricity and xp in sprinting IS a useful thing!

[Rathlord]

I've ridden a bike generator before... the amount of power it gives is truly minuscule. You have to peddle your brains out just to keep a low wattage light bulb lit (dimly). You'd never produce enough power to be useful- it'd be a huge waste of your time for no noticeable advantage. Power probably leaks out of batteries naturally faster than you could put it in

 

Sorry to shoot down the idea, it's a good thought, it's just really, really impractical.

[CaptKaspar]

I'm not sure if i'm taking the point of the idea. I mean, why would you ride a bike and get tired yourself when you can build a water mill using the same principle but using water instead of your energy?

 

Because you need the very important natural flowing water for them to be worth it. Once you find that running water (with enough force to spin a turbine) you then need to construct a turbine that will stay in place in that running water. Ever tried to firmly place something in running water? 1-2 feet of running water is often enough force to move cars. I just don't see it being feasible for the average person to construct something like that. Some people sure, but most will not be able to. Not to mention the logistics of then transporting the energy to where you need it. Are you going to run wires and tie it into an existing electrical grid? Charge batteries and then haul the batteries to a DC Inverter? They are heavy and cumbersome and wiring will take some expertise.

 

Just ask yourself, why doesn't everyone in the world use water mills for electricity? It is no doubt a great source of power, but it takes some pretty impressive logistics/engineering to harness it efficiently.

 

Producing electricity on site where it is needed is the ideal solution, so your safe house should be next to the watermill. If your safe house is not, to transfer electricity over distance you need to have high enough voltage for there to be an electrical potential difference so that electricity flows from the higher resistance to lower resistance. For that to happen you have to increase the resistance of the line at the point of power production. Does the average person know how to do that? Btw this equates to lost energy that isn't utilized at the consumption end. ie less efficient. This is one of the major drawbacks to wind power currently. Most wind farms are in rural areas and have to transfer their energy production over long distances. Alot of that energy is then lost/wasted.

 

Bike generators are an ideal solution, as long as you have the caloric reserves on hand to support its use. They are compact, quiet, and virtually anyone can use one. They can be outdoors, indoors, upstairs, downstairs, in sight or out of sight. The drawback is that they essentially convert caloric energy into electrical energy. If you find yourself throwing away rotting food because you can't consume it all, you might as well convert it into stored electrical energy instead. Also their wattage production is relatively low and is variable to the users input. BUT, you don't need to power much more than a fridge, a few lights, and maybe a toaster oven, so you don't need a ton. Also you get some cardio exercise!

 

Remember rule #1 in a zombie apocalypse: Cardio

[Impetiso]

 

I'm not sure if i'm taking the point of the idea. I mean, why would you ride a bike and get tired yourself when you can build a water mill using the same principle but using water instead of your energy?

 

Because you need the very important natural flowing water for them to be worth it. Once you find that running water (with enough force to spin a turbine) you then need to construct a turbine that will stay in place in that running water. Ever tried to firmly place something in running water? 1-2 feet of running water is often enough force to move cars. I just don't see it being feasible for the average person to construct something like that. Some people sure, but most will not be able to. Not to mention the logistics of then transporting the energy to where you need it. Are you going to run wires and tie it into an existing electrical grid? Charge batteries and then haul the batteries to a DC Inverter? They are heavy and cumbersome and wiring will take some expertise.

 

Just ask yourself, why doesn't everyone in the world use water mills for electricity? It is no doubt a great source of power, but it takes some pretty impressive logistics/engineering to harness it efficiently.

 

Producing electricity on site where it is needed is the ideal solution, so your safe house should be next to the watermill. If your safe house is not, to transfer electricity over distance you need to have high enough voltage for there to be an electrical potential difference so that electricity flows from the higher resistance to lower resistance. For that to happen you have to increase the resistance of the line at the point of power production. Does the average person know how to do that? Btw this equates to lost energy that isn't utilized at the consumption end. ie less efficient. This is one of the major drawbacks to wind power currently. Most wind farms are in rural areas and have to transfer their energy production over long distances. Alot of that energy is then lost/wasted.

 

Bike generators are an ideal solution, as long as you have the caloric reserves on hand to support its use. They are compact, quiet, and virtually anyone can use one. They can be outdoors, indoors, upstairs, downstairs, in sight or out of sight. The drawback is that they essentially convert caloric energy into electrical energy. If you find yourself throwing away rotting food because you can't consume it all, you might as well convert it into stored electrical energy instead. Also their wattage production is relatively low and is variable to the users input. BUT, you don't need to power much more than a fridge, a few lights, and maybe a toaster oven, so you don't need a ton. Also you get some cardio exercise!

 

Remember rule #1 in a zombie apocalypse: Cardio

 

At first I didn't get why would anyone spend so much energy, and time, to get a little amount of energy. Even if you get enough for a fridge, a few lights and a toaster, you spend a great amount of energy an a decent amount of time, and you need both to survive. Yeah, cardio it's important, but more important than cardio is having enough energy to outrun the zombies, carrying stuff or just not sleeping in the middle of a zombie infested city. Time it's important too because it's needed to gather food and whater, and that's your basic needs.

But then I saw the point in it. The best part of the idea it's not the energy one, its the cardio part. You have some free time? then use the bike generator, cardio training (sprinting) and gain some energy too, but that's it, a benefit for training.

 

When i talk about a water mill, it's not the usual water mill because there is no need of it. It's a small generator like the one you use for a bike, and therefore you don't need a big stream, so it doesn't need to be a natural. That's why the principles are the same: you spend time for making electricity, but you don't spend your energy.

[Rathlord]

You would never make enough energy on a bike generator to power a fridge. They take huge amounts of power; there's just no way in hell you could ever keep a fridge on, probably even if you had someone on the thing 24 hours a day. Remember, these can *barely* light up a light bulb. Great if you want to, say, recharge your phone battery over a few hours, but it will never be more than that.

[Strang]

Seeing as these do not generate lots of power, using bike generators would give you a boost in sprinting, while also powering some lights up. Seeing powered lights after the electricity has been out could provide some happiness

[CaptKaspar]

You would never make enough energy on a bike generator to power a fridge. They take huge amounts of power; there's just no way in hell you could ever keep a fridge on, probably even if you had someone on the thing 24 hours a day. Remember, these can *barely* light up a light bulb. Great if you want to, say, recharge your phone battery over a few hours, but it will never be more than that.

 

You're right about not being enough power. But they can produce over 100 watts! It also takes only about 30 watts to power 4 LED lights. Here's a video with plenty of evidence. I saw one kid hit 197 watts!!, which is unrealistic to think that it can be sustainable.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmJoXPHkH9I

 

A bike generator alone is not a complete solution and you would never try to run a fridge directly off the bike. The bike would be used to charge your 12v car batteries that you have stored during night time hours. Your solar cells would be charging them continuously during the day. The fridge and other gadgets would be plugged into your DC inverter which is hooked up to a 12v car battery. A low end 12v car battery can put out 200amps, so we're looking at 2400watts off a fully charged low end car battery.

 

My fridge/freezer runs on 5.2amps. So I need 624 watts/hr to run it.

 

You need a pretty good solar setup to make this sustainable if you want to run your fridge 100% of the time. But the good news is that you don't need to. Run it till its chilled and turn it off. It'll stay cold for a long time if you don't open the doors. If you open them, run it for awhile again. Winter months, just put your stuff outside when its cold enough and don't run it at all if you don't need to.

 

Cold enough; that is another advantage of the bike generator. You can use all your physical energy to produce internal body heat, heat due to mechanical/electrical inefficiencies, and produce power to indirectly run an electric heater! 

 

Again, bike generators are only worth a damn if you have the caloric reserves on hand. If you're starving, or even barely scraping by, they aren't worth the calories.

[Kajin]

If you have a battery farm, having a bike generator certainly wouldn't hurt. And I'd like to think I'd have some sort of exercise machine anyway, because you gotta keep your endurance up or else it'll atrophy and you'll be that much more likely to become zombie chow. Sure it'd cause an increase in food requirements, but you'd be crazy not to work some manner of daily (or even just tri-weekly) exercise into your routine. Unless food reserves were so low that you can't afford the extra energy drain, but then you'd have massive problems of some other sort anyway.

 

Think about you. You got your safe house. It's nice and safe and barricaded. You took the time to build walls around it for good measure, too. Your garden is up and giving you sustainable food. Now all you gotta do is pass the time. Doesn't lend itself well to staying in shape or maintaining sanity in general. Having an outlet for it (riding a generator bike) as well as a way to keep physical running endurance up (also a riding generator bike) is probably the best choice, because it also supplies a small amount of power for your batteries.

 

Way I see it, would you rather have a month of food and be all wheezy and gaspy when you run out and have to go get more, or would you rather have three weeks of food and be fit enough to run like a champion when the time for the supply runs draws near? Bike generator is a good way to manage that while providing maximum return utility for what you spend.

[Rathlord]

Bike generator wouldn't even put a noticeable amount in a battery bank if you've already got a solar generator; it just wouldn't be worthwhile. And if you don't have one, it's useless anyways. It's a useless/useless situation.

 

If you want to stay in shape, chop wood, improve your fort, or just ride an exercise bike (or a real bike), rather than potentially risking your life looking for electrical components that will never influence your survival.

 

I feel like we're just getting hung up on the idea of this and overlooking the hugely impractical and wasteful side of it.

[Kajin]

They have flashlights that you can power for a couple minutes at a time just by shaking them up and down for a few seconds. Attaching the wheel of a stationary bike to an electric motor and riding it for an hour or so for exercise once a day would generate a fair bit of energy. Especially since the size difference between the bike wheel and the motor handle would give you some serious rpm. It'd be enough to charge some batteries up at the very least. Maybe give you a few hours of lights or even run an electric stove long enough to cook some food after a day or three of energy storage so you don't have to use your wood for a campfire.

 

And why is it so bad of an idea? Eventually you'll reach a point where you have nothing important to accomplish and all you can do is pass the time. Chopping wood is fine exercise and all, but it's not good running exercise. It only builds endurance as far as swinging things is concerned. Only builds up muscle strength. That won't help you when you're running for your life. Sure you could just use an exercise bike machine, but those things are huge and unwieldy. Good luck dragging one back to your safehouse. You can't ride a real bike or go out for a jog either because if you do it could attract hostile attention from zeds or thieving survivors. Hooking the equipment up would be good electrical practice on top of whatever construction practice you'd get dismantling and reconstructing the bike setup. Learning how to macgyver shit like that is important for an apocalypse survivor.

 

And as I've said before in other topics, finding electrical components for such a setup is ludicrously easy. Literally every house has at least half the components you need for a basic electric generator. Any random junkyard will have most if not all the components you'd need. You'd happen across everything you'd need to construct this setup as a side consequence of just one trip around the neighborhood to look for food. Why not fiddle around with a few of the relatively abundant pieces to see if you could make a basic electric generator using a bicycle as your source of movement? If nothing else it'd give you a relatively safe way to practice electrical skills in a safe (relatively) environment because you'd have complete control over the source of energy. And when you're done? Congrats! You can power the battery for your flashlight or handheld radio, now.

 

In fact, having a bike setup like this would be useful for things other than electrical generation, too. Attach it to a crude pump and water storage and you could water your gardens from a minute or two of peddling without having to walk back and forth with a jug doing it manually. Attach it to a grinding stone and grind flour for bread or sharpen dull tools and weapons. A number of tedious, time consuming things could be done easier and more efficiently by utilizing a bike generator.

 

Simply put, doing this and building a bike generator provides the most utility per unit of energy consumed. You have to exercise and keep your cardio up so you can run and have the lung capacity to scream with your arms flailing about, but otherwise that's just wasted effort. Taking the time investment to build something like this gives you added utility to offset the energy consumed from exercise. It might not be much, but it adds up and makes life just a little bit easier and the knowledge gained from making the effort is itself invaluable.

[Mikhail Reign]

I was reading this and I came up with an idea of a tiered energy system.

For starts you would be able to build a car battery bank, made of 3-5 battery's. This would have a life span of a day or so powering something before it ran out. With the addition of a trolley (they type UPS guys use to move boxes) you would have a portable battery bank that you could push around. With the addition of jumper cables this could be used as a arch welder, which would quickly drain the battery's, but could be used to make steel items (or apply steel to already built wood items to reinforce then) such as fences, door etc. It could also be used in the construction of other more advanced electricticity making items.

The bike generator could be make from, say, a bike, a few planks and nails, a fan belt and an alternater. It would very slowly put charge back into a battery bank. Not fast enough to power anything, but fast enough that if the a battery bank was being used as a welder you would slowly be able to accomplish your project over a few days.

Your next project could be a small wind turbine, constructed from a radiator fan, an alternater, scrap metal and would require a welder to make. It would also put out a small amount of electrict, similar to the amount that the bike put out, but a constant supply of it, instead of just when you where using the bike. The wind turbine would create enough electricity to power a few light constantly, anything larger would slowly drain the battery.

Now that you have a more reliable renewable energy that doesn't require direct effort to produce, you would be abl to make some larger products.

The next project on your tier tree could be a wood gasifier (read my post on it if you are unsure of what they are) which would require more welds then the turbine. It would also require 2 44gl drums (which could only be moved one at a time, and would be visibly carried by the character, slowin them down and reducing visibility), steel pipes (note the plural), a small motor (lawn mower) and an alternator. This would require many days of charging the battery bank to complete the welds (which wouldn't have to be done all at once - a project could be half welded, the bank die, and then days later when the bank was recharged, work could continue), and would also require a fairly decent amount of wood (x2 wood per hour? One to burn, one to gasify a can't remember the current burn rate for wood, but double that). The up side to this would be that your new generator would be able to power a few things constantly, such as a fridge and a few light AND charge your battery bank. The down side would be the noise (which could maybe be muffled with some additional items, or purchase a new exhaust could be a weld able item)

There is obviously a lot more that would need to go into this, as well as a few more 'project' that you could built to make to undertaking desirable, but you get the idea - the tl dr; you could slowly create more and more constant electricty, a key item in doing so would be the previous creation of electricty.

Other projects: electrict fence, metal walls and doors, repair cars, large gates (car entrance), watch tower (?), more durabel tools/tool repair, cages. Anyone else got any ideas?

[Troblin]

Simple recipe - chain a zombie to a bike face to the sofa, sit on the sofa and watch TV powered by zombie inpired by you......

[Mikhail Reign]

Im just gunna bump this because I would really like some feedback on my idea above. Its justabout to slip off the front page.

Please don't bump threads in suggestions without adding to the discussion.

 

Fine. Ill just make it a new topic