Comments on: Integrating the Transportation Network Through Energy Credits

By: Thermal Imaging

Thermal Imaging — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 06:34:50 +0000

i am overly conscious about food calories because i would hate to become fat and flabby in the future *”:

By: David

David — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 05:42:23 +0000

Another problem I see with this idea is that people who bike usually have their own bicycles. They’re not going to rent or borrow one from the public area when they use their own. I agree with the theory that people biking is not going to power a metro train car.

By: Alon Levy

Alon Levy — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:44:26 +0000

At 16 mph / 25 km/h and 180 lbs / 80 kg, that works out to be 2000 joules, or a 100-watt light bulb shining for 10 seconds.

100-watt for 20 seconds, surely.

But you’re right – this will never work in reality.

By: Ocean Railroader

Ocean Railroader — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 16:21:13 +0000

I don’t think a bike will be able to make enought power to sell to the grid. But I think it would be able to make enought to power a head light or cell phones maybe a Ipod possibly.

By: Loren Petrich

Loren Petrich — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 09:57:45 +0000

Once again, let us work out the numbers.

It’s rather easy to estimate the kinetic energy of a typical bike rider. At 16 mph / 25 km/h and 180 lbs / 80 kg, that works out to be 2000 joules, or a 100-watt light bulb shining for 10 seconds.

One’s not going to get much energy out of bicycle regenerative braking.

By: Matt Roberts

Matt Roberts — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 23:08:26 +0000

Ok maybe I am not up to date with biking, but how would the breaking system work? The bikes I still ride and my kids, you hit the brakes and teh wheel stops and if you are not careful you go head over handlebars. As the inertia of the rider vastly outweighs the bikes, so unlike that of a car or train the braking process takes a lot less distance than someting like a Dynamic brake on a train or an F1 KERS device would require.

I don’t know but this strikes me as too much a non-engineering, non-economic utopian though exercise that will never amount to anything other than to soak up some government grant money to prove it is not feasable. An industrial designer working at the Royal College of Art. Not saying nothing useful will ever come out of thought exercises like this, as it seems like anymore it is easier to say why something won’t work than why it does (guilty as charged) but this seems too environmentalist utopia to actually work.

By: Loren Petrich

Loren Petrich — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 20:33:25 +0000

Let’s work out the numbers.

Our food intake sets an upper limit to our available energy output — a lot of gets used for internal function or gets turned into body heat by various inefficiencies.

An input of 2000 – 3000 food calories per day is equivalent to an energy consumption of 100 – 150 watts or 0.13 – 0.2 horsepower.

So that scheme is never going to work.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:11:32 +0000

i remember riding a bicycle with a dynamo-powered headlamp as a kid, and it was not fun. it should be possible to make a more efficient bicyclist-powered dynamo, but you can’t get away from the fact that a cyclist can only comfortably put out so much energy, and any amount that the dynamo takes up is not available to propel the bike. now, regenerative braking that provides a power-assist when needed is a different story … it would, of course, be ridiculously expensive and would not feed power into the grid, but at least it would provide a benefit to the cyclist.