Perks of pedal power

I HAVEbeen told that in Hungary people receiving grants are required to come to work daily to be allocated a job and the “handout” will be received at the end of the day. This is obviously also a stimulus so they will try as hard as possible to obtain a regular job.

A trained cyclist can produce about 400 watts an hour, or keep four incandescent bulbs or about 30 low energy bulbs, or many more LEDs going. At a “green” hotel near Cape Town International airport, even the energy generated by the apparatus in the gymnasium is fed into batteries with inverters to supplement the wind and solar power generated. The energy generated, as suggested, would yield no “extra” greenhouse gases! A worker can maintain 75 watts per hour for eight hours which is a total of 600 watts per day and therefore a team of 10 males can produce six kilowatts per eight hour shift. One million people can produce 100 000 x 6 = 600 000 kilowatts of energy per 24 hours or 0.6 megawatts per million unemployed.

If one would look at 1 000 small communities, each with 100 teams of 10, each team could produce 600 kilowatts or divided into eight-hour shifts could produce 200 kilowatts around the clock. This is enough to supply 1 000 homes with television power and perhaps a few lights. The power can be stored in lithium-ion batteries, and to keep a 10 kilowatt battery charged will only take 20 people –the batteries can deliver 2 kilowatts for a few hours.

Schools and clinics, government and municipal offices, could be powered by the people coming for their daily state subsidy – it should make them far more appreciative of the grants and will satisfy the downtrodden taxpayers to some extent. Obviously, this would be difficult to implement but it may point out how much we waste by not being organised properly. Ben Smit