HPEG, Human Powered Energy Generator

We’ve all seen cartoons or sitcom characters pedaling a bicycle to generate electricity. It’s no laughing matter, however, and very possible to power small appliances using pedal power. A HPEG (Human Power Energy Generator) machine not only enforces an appreciation for the energy we normally spare no thought for, it can save significant amounts of money and ease your household budget!

The HPEG is a machine that anyone can build or purchase and can power a 12Volt battery, be used to help run a 12Volt system or it can run a DC power system. HPEG can run AC appliances like coffee machines, fans, electric razors, and even cordless drills! DC powered radios, lighting or low power water pumps can also be run with a HPEG. You may need a regulator since the energy delivered follows the pattern of your pedaling.

The power you can generate with the HPEG depends entirely on you. The harder you pedal, the more energy you can produce. Most people can generate 60 watts of power through pedaling and 35 watts by using a hand crank. The HPEG has a steel frame that holds a crank similar to a bicycle pedal mechanism with a chain drive that connects to a DC magnet generator and comes with foot pedals to give you a choice of hand or foot power. It’s an invaluable source during a power emergency or you can just replenish the battery when you’d like a little workout.

HPEG is manufactured by Windstream Power, a Vermont company that manufacturers all their products in the United States. Their web site states that a person can glean 150 watts from the HPEG sustainably; the power output is about one third of a horsepower, a horsepower consisting of 746 watts. They make a Portable Power Pack that is available with the generator that has a storage battery, an inverter with 800 watts of power at its peak, connection cable, LED voltage readout and an outlet of 120 volts that will turn your workout into power you can use. Windstream Power’s solar applications and wind turbines can also be added to the HPEG for people interested in being “off the grid”. The HPEG is powerful enough to run the sound check at a small concert hall so, as you can see, it will definitely serve household power needs.

Introduction to Pedal Power

We all know how much energy we can expend on a bicycle, and a generator run with pedal power harnesses that energy so that we can store it or use it to run our household. A DC (direct current) generator that is connected to the bicycle’s flywheel converts the energy into electricity and stores it in batteries. This energy can be used to for banks of batteries that may already be in use to power wind or water turbines or solar panels. It can also be used as DC current for appliances in RVs or watercraft or those used in camping. An inverter can be added to change the DC current into standard 110 volt to power household appliances that use AC (alternating current).

James McCullagh published a book in 1977 called Pedal Power: in Work, Leisure and Transportation that cited tests conducted at Oxford on power generated by cyclists. Stuart Wilson conducted the tests that concluded that it’s possible to generate 75 watts in an hour by the average cyclist. His research concluded that this human power can generate 200 watts for short periods of time, even 750 watts for a second or two, and this energy can be used to power banks of batteries or provide lights, run radios and other low-energy appliances.

Thus, the human energy generator was conceived! We have designed this web site to show the potential for this type of power and the implements invented to take advantage of it. A person in average physical condition can produce enough power to run all of his/her small appliances and improve their health at the same time-two benefits that directly improve the quality of life! As long as you don’t have huge energy demands, pedal power can reduce your slavery to the power grid.

Below, we have listed all the parts needed to assemble your own pedal power system. You’ll also be able to explore an example of using this design to produce free energy.

Parts you’ll Need to Build your own 12 volt Generator Run by Human Pedal Power

Stationary Bicycle

A bike with a front mounted 15.5” flywheel with a 16 tooth freewheel able to be fitted with a fan belt is the ideal model. The best gear set up is a fifty-two tooth chain that you can connect to the flywheel/freewheel assembly. The pulley diameter is best at two and one half inches but the size can be adjusted to make it easier to spin the pulley. The larger the pulley diameter, the easier it will be to spin it.

You will need a fan belt big enough to cover this assembly. Take into account the size of the flywheel and generator wheel and especially the space between them.

The Generator

The most effective generator is a 24 volt DC magnet generator, rated for 1800 rpm with an output of 1/3 horsepower. The rpm’s plus the voltage output is meant to make the generator rotate at 900 rpm’s, producing a 12 volt output. You will need solid copper, 10 gauge wire with a resistance of R=1 ohm’s per thousand feet.

The Voltage Regulator, Diode and Inverter

You will need a flat, 20 amp automotive fuse to put in line with the positively charged electric wire. This will prevent damage to the batter when it becomes fully charged by limiting the current flow. A diode, or valve, rated for at least 35 volts and 25 amps must be applied to the wiring at either the negative or positive end.

An inverter handles peak electric loads and converts the 12 volt DC power into 110 AC. You can figure out the load by looking at your appliances’ watt requirements. The average inverter allows 60-90% of the 12 volt DC to be converted to 110 AC.

Battery

You will need to use a 55 lb, 12 volt lead-acid marine battery with 100 amp hour with twenty hour cycle and 300 discharges per cycle life.

Other Requirements

You will, of course, need a wheeled wooden platform and a meter or meters to measure ampere, RPM and voltage.

Using your HPEG

You will have to determine the daily Kwh usage of the appliances you want to power with your HPEG in order to know how much pedal power will be needed. For example, if you use your reading lamp for two hours per day and with a 50 watt bulb, it will need 100 watts from your generator. Since 100 watts equals 10 amps, you will need to generate 10 amps per day to power your reading lamp. Since the average person can generate 75 watts, or 7.5 amps per hour, you will need to cycle for approximately 1 ¼ hour to have enough charge to power that lamp.

This may seem impractical, and it is, for one person to supply all small household appliances with a pedal power generator but in a multiple resident household it is easy to accomplish. If the household uses an average amount of lighting, a clock radio, a toaster and a couple of other appliances, each person in a household of four could dedicate an hour a day to power the small appliances. This isn’t unreasonable at all, and can be quite enjoyable especially if you can set up a reading station or a small television near the HPEG.

The most immediate use for a HPEG system seems to be for emergency power in case of disaster or outages. But you can also apply it as an off-grid power for everyday use of small appliances or water pumps, emergency communications, as an educational exhibit for your child’s school or college (or your own!) and as a way to improve your own health and endurance.

The HPEG by itself comes equipped with a diode protected connecting cable if you decide to purchase it without a power pack. The cable lets you choose which wire termination is best for your needs. Pliers-type clips attach to the battery posts in most universal cables, much like the jumper cables you have in your car. The diode is contained in an in-line box made of aluminum which prevents the current from traveling back to the generator once it’s stored in the battery.

Past Uses and New Idea for Pedal Power

This is far from a new energy source, having been used for transportation in the form of bicycles for over a century. The first bike was presumably designed by Leonardo da Vinci. Inventors globally make their own designs, making the earliest bicycles of wood. We’ve come a long way since then but the concept of the bicycle as been around for centuries, probably since the invention of the wheel. daVinci was merely the first to set the idea to paper that’s been preserved.

People have used pedal power in the past for dental drills and to power hand tools while artists have used pedals to power their potting wheels since at least 200 A.D.!

These days, people have learned to power water wells and laptops with pedal power. In the Third World, many villages routinely use bicycles to power small grain mills or to pump water, much like we used to use hand pumps that you can still see scattered throughout the country.

Windstream Pedal Powered Electricity Generator

Windstream has been making renewable energy technology since 1974. Their pedal powered generator is not a bicycle but a set of pedals that can be powered by the feet or cranked by hand to charge batteries and power small appliances. It is used in case of power failures, is quite handy in remote locations and is used by many to reduce their dependence on the commercial energy grid. By pedaling, about 80 watts can be generated continuously whereas hand cranking can produce about 50 watts. Hand cranks come as options with the generator and can be interchanged with the pedals. The latest model, called the MkIII Human Power Generator, has more strength, smoother operation and allows for easier adjustments than previous versions.

Other News from the World of Pedal Power

Health and Independence

Many companies in this era of energy-consciousness are offering their employees incentives to save energy while improving their health. The Stark Mountain Health Plan buys bikes worth up to five hundred dollars for their employees and awards them another $500 if they’ve cycled at least 650 miles by year’s end. However, the employees will owe the company $1 for each of the 650 miles that they fail to bike. Skimmer Hellier, co-owner of the company, conceived the plan and says it’s great to watch his employees improve their health as they reduce their dependence on conventional transportation.

The Pedal Power Dyanpod

Dynapod is a word from the Greek language meaning both power and foot. The modern dynapod is a pedal-powered device that can be attached to nearly anything and used to generate power. First introduced in 1968, the first single-person working model was built by Alex Weir of Edinburgh University and at a Tanzanian college a two-person dynapod was built. Both models used a bicycle wheel filled with cement as a flywheel. Weir’s prototypes were also tested as both a winnowing machine and a corn grinder.

Introducing the Pedal-a-Watt Stationary Bike Power Generator!

The Pedal-A-Watt is a bicycle stand helps you generate power from an ordinary bicycle or any size, although the larger the wheels, the easier it is to generate power. Rather than buy a special stationary bicycle or other equipment, you can use that old bike that’s hanging in your garage and not even have to fix the flat tires!

With Pedal-A-Watt, you can charge a battery for use at a later time and it’s a great addition to an existing battery system. A typical cyclist can generate 125-200 watts on the Pedal-A-Watt and while this may not seem like much, many of the things we use throughout the use very little power. Frequently used lights, radios and even laptops don’t draw much current at 12 volts DC. A 25 watt fluorescent light bulb, when used instead of a 100 watt incandescent bulb, will last for eight hours on just 200 watts of power. LEDs, the promising new lighting technology, are even more energy efficient and will burn for days on that same 200 watts!

You can look at the label on an appliance to see what its rating in watts is. An appliance that is labeled “40 W” needs 40 watts. A small television, for example, will require 100 watts while watching a streaming feed of that same show on a laptop will only consume 10 watts. You can use your energy much more efficiently at less cost if you choose carefully among your options of use.

The Pedal-A-Watt can power items directly into a 12 volt battery or to a PowerPak which stores the energy and can be carried to the appliance to be plugged directly into it. You can use the DC PowerCenter, a voltage converter, to power your portable devices such as video games, radios and CD players. You can even use the PowerCenter with your own battery.

August 2007-Short Term Hydroeclectric Power System

MIPSO (multi-pass iteration particle swarm optimization) can solve the short term scheduling of power systems using wind turbine generators. MIPSO, a new algorithm, can solve in nonlinear optimal scheduling problems by incorporating an index call IB (iteration best) into PSO (particle swarm optimization) in order to improve the quality of a solution. Multi-pass dynamic programming furthers and improves the efficiency when applied to modified PSO.

The first determination before applying MIPSO must be to the operational regions of the hydro units and pumped storage plants in the scheduling time range. The power system load curves are then shaved by wind turbine power generation. After that, the MIPSO algorithm will calculate the hydroeclectric generation schedule. Beginning with a basic time stage and refining the times between two stages and pass by pass spacing, or iteration, particle agents can help reach a solution to the scheduling problem.

September, 2007-A MIPSO Approach to Scheduling Battery Energy Storage Systems in Wind Turbine Generators

A new index called Idquoiteration bestrdquo is used with PSO (ldquoparticle swarm optimizationrdquo) to improve solution quality. PSO is further modified by applying multipass dynamic programming to better the computation efficiency. MIPSO is applied to solve the optimal operating schedule of a BESS (battery energy storage system) for the industrial rate users with wind turbine generators. The uncertainty of the wind speeds and load must be considered; the resulting operating schedule of the BESS for users with wind turbine generators will calculate the minimum electricity charge of time-of-use rate users.

More Pedal Power in Use!

There are many uses for pedal power in today’s high-tech world. One family in Lirio de los Valles, Chimaltenango successfully produces 300 pounds of organic animal feed per day with their bicycle mill and corn degrainer! A women’s collective in San Andres Itzapa produces organic aloe shampoo from the plants they grow at home and process with a bicycle blender. The proceeds from their business fund their reforestation project. They are not only avoiding pollution by using pedal power, they’re restoring forests and natural habitats to their region.

Although these projects are happening in Guatemala, “first-world” countries such as the United States, Canada and Britain could most certainly achieve greater independence from oil and improve their national health by employing more pedal power. As shown by the two projects above, the benefits are tremendous without any negative impact on either the land or the people.