Commercially Available Bike Generators Are Not Sustainable (2011)(solar.lowtechmagazine.com) |
Commercially Available Bike Generators Are Not Sustainable (2011)(solar.lowtechmagazine.com) |
It does seem a bit extreme, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating: this website has been featured on the HN front page many times and I’ve not seen it ever falter. The same cannot be said for the many run of the mill “infinite scalability” cloud based SPA’s that make the front page – even those maintained by sizable organizations with hefty cloud budgets.
Retro-look nit: all are outdated nominal voltages. The US is 120 V (since the 1960s), while the UK and EU are 230 V (since the mid-1990s).
she might enjoy an etrike, though more for recreation than normal day to day
Thanks, I learned something. I’m suprised how little drag they seem to add.
https://www.cyclingabout.com/dynamo-hub-power-drag-testing-s...
Your average inexperienced person can pedal at maybe 80rpm comfortably, but probably considers even that to be "fast."
A road cyclist with a year or so under their belt will do 100rpm if they put their mind to it and are positioned well biomechanically. Above that, to do it and be smooth and efficient, especially for any sort of sustained effort, you have to have a decent amount of experience/training.
That's well over 10x too slow.
And there's still the issue of your average person only being able to put out 100-200W past about 1-3 minutes.
Nope. If input is 100W, loss is 60%, and resulting in output of 40W, then to increase output to 100W you don't need 60% more input (which would output 64W) you need 150% more input.
Sorry I lacked the proper name, but yes they are about. And definitely look like they could help people certain health issues. Although getting down into it would be something to consider for older peeps.
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about/the-solar-website/#h...
https://github.com/lowtechmag/solar/wiki/Solar-Web-Design
https://homebrewserver.club/low-tech-website-howto.html
IMO the only optimization they 'missed' is to pre-compress the static files and images on disk, since it's cheaper to decompress on-the-fly if the client doesn't support gzip. The could use zopfli to "extra compress" the most frequently accessed files, and use this as a solar dump load to usefully burn extra power when the batteries are full (perhaps compressing with gzip -1 when Pelican re-builds the static site, or even avoid pre-compression altogether during the build process.
https://blog.llandsmeer.com/tech/2019/08/29/precompression.h...
I remember reading about low tech efficient cook stoves for poor countries and thinking the misses would rather have an induction burner, microwave, and an ice chest running off a solar panel.
Those would definitely be hits.
Also, solar panels are old. Bell Labs demonstrated the first practical silicon solar cell in 1954. At some point, you're just trying to split (possibly nonexistent) hairs for an aesthetic, as opposed to making a principled stand against technology.
https://www.aps.org/apsnews/2009/04/bell-labs-silicon-solar-...