Ride a Bike, Power a Hotel

[jared]

This is great! I got the link to this article from Bicycling Mag on twitter (@bicyclingmag)

Ride a Bike, Power a Hotel

If you ride one of its new electricity-generating exercise bikes long enough to generate 10 watt hours or more of electricity (not long), you get a free meal worth about $45.

The bikes have iPhones on the handlebars that can tell you how much power is being produced and fed into the hotel. Fun!

Apparently it only takes about 6 minutes to generate that much power, which works out to making about $450/hr. Not Bad. I'm sure, however, once people get going they want to keep it going. In the whole scheme of things I'm sure they're not really contributing much to the hotel's electric usage but it's a cool idea. It does beg the question as to how you could make it more efficient. What do we have to do to double electric output from bikes?

[Damon]

This is really cool. Definitely a gimmick but a great one! I wonder how long it takes for the hotel to recoup the cost of each bike and power unit. I like that idea quite a bit. It would really make you feel like you're doing real work. And if you're away from your own bike, it would provide some good training.

Damon