7 Comments on “Bike share concept that would add power to the grid”

1. #1 Joe D
   on Jul 16th, 2009 at 3:23 pm

   The problem with this idea is that it’s not cost effective.

   A person on a bicycle just doesn’t produce a lot of power. A lot of people on a lot of bicycles could conceivably generate enough to be useful, but the cost of the hardware required to collect and distribute this would be many many times that of the power generated.

2. #2 elliott
   on Jul 16th, 2009 at 3:48 pm

   Well, I think if you are already putting in a pay-to-use bike sharing program anyway, this might be a good supplemental program. A good program like that would have hundreds or thousands of bikes participating. It would definitely need to be subsidized to get it off the ground and make the numbers high enough to start becoming cost effective.

3. #3 Joe D
   on Jul 16th, 2009 at 3:53 pm

   But that’s just it. It will never be cost effective. The amount of energy produced will not be enough to make up for the cost of collecting it.

4. #4 Doug
   on Jul 17th, 2009 at 2:04 am

   Joe’s right. I posted this in the ACA-List list when it was posted there –

   Your average casual cyclist averages something like 50 watts (and
   that’s probably on the high side.) Even if 100% of this power was
   saved (i.e. the cyclists rode nowhere) with 100% efficiency
   (impossible), it would take 300 cyclists to power *one* car for a
   similar amount of time (assuming that the car requires 20
   horsepower average, which is just a guess.) As for the actual
   energy recovered, 10% of your energy going into braking and
   recovering 50% of that seems far more likely — so you’d need
   6000 cyclists riding for one hour (or some combination thereof)
   to power that one car for an hour. All that to save one or two
   gallons of gas?

   Storing energy lost to braking makes sense, but it would make
   more sense if you could actually use it on the bicycle, rather
   than trying to store it for later to power a *bus*. If the bike
   would store energy when you used your brake, and then use that
   energy to help you go again — THAT would be good.

   Also consider how cheap 50 watts is. At $0.20/kWhr (a bit on the
   high side), each cyclist is making one cent an hour — again,
   assuming 100% power being saved (i.e. they’re not going
   anywhere), 100% efficiency. That won’t even come close to paying
   for the maintenance on the energy-saving system, let alone the
   system itself. It would be far more cost effective to just put
   some solar cells on the roof somewhere. Perhaps on the roof of
   the bus itself? (Though the energy created by that even under
   ideal conditions would be insignificant compared to the needs of
   the bus — but covering the roof with solar panels would still
   give your bus at least a hundred cyclists worth of `recovered
   braking energy’ in bright sunlight.)

5. #5 Streetsblog New York City » Can We Create More Meaningful City Rankings?
   on Jul 17th, 2009 at 10:31 am

   [...] How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives For the Better." And Austin on Two Wheels posts on a proposed bikeshare system that would add power back to the [...]

6. #6 Streetsblog Capitol Hill » Can We Create More Meaningful City Rankings?
   on Jul 17th, 2009 at 10:48 am

   [...] How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives For the Better." And Austin on Two Wheels posts on a proposed bikeshare system that would add power back to the [...]

7. #7 Streetsblog San Francisco » Can We Create More Meaningful City Rankings?
   on Jul 17th, 2009 at 11:01 am

   [...] How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives For the Better." And Austin on Two Wheels posts on a proposed bikeshare system that would add power back to the [...]

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