50
Low-Tech Magazine: Human Powered Air Compressor and Energy Storage System
(solar.lowtechmagazine.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
50 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
37708 readers
168 users here now
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I wonder how efficient it is. Let's say the bike is 90% efficient, the pump is 70% efficient and the pneumatic power tools are 70% efficient, so you get 44.1% efficiency.
If you give or take 10% from/to each of those, you can get as low as 28.8% efficient or as high as 64% efficient.
If you build the electic equivalent (generator, battery and electric powertools) it is probably twice as efficient or more. Pedal for only a half to a third as long.
Adding to this: This is basically turning solar energy in stored energy. Solar power-> growing Plants-> Man eats Plants-> kinetic energy-> storage
Simply take a solar panel and a battery.
You loose around 30% of energy from the sun through the atmosphere, plants are about 3% efficient at turning light into sugar, humans are about 25% efficient at turning food into mechanical energy, so you are only about 0.525% efficient at turning energy from the sun into human power on earth. So you this device is only about 0.231525% efficient at turning solar power into usable work.
Assuming 80% efficiency for the electric variant, 20% efficiency for solar panels, 90% efficiency for robots to turn electricity into mechanical work, that's 14.4% efficient. Then it's like 62.196307 times more efficient to become a solar electric android and pedal on it in space.