When you see how little energy a Tour d’France cyclist can generate, with their legs, over a given period of time, it becomes clear why these crank things are useless.
You could possibly charge a phone with a cycling setup, I haven’t done the math in a while. What I recall is the human body makes for a terrible generator.
Humans are efficient, and there are also huge losses in converting the energy from work to electricity, and then further converting this to whatever voltage you actually need, while also likely first charging a battery somewhere so you can use it at a different time than you are cranking/pedaling…
However humans are also strong and can think of mechanisms that help with leverage and whatnot; for example an elliptical machine would probably be better than a bike.
With that being said the power you can generate is still pretty small; around 100Wh is floating around. If you worked out more you’d make more, obviously, but that might not be feasible.
It’d still be more than enough for essentials like charging your phone though.
I would be legitimately interested in a demonstratably good crank charger, but it seems like there’s a million bad ones out there, that’s why I ask.
When you see how little energy a Tour d’France cyclist can generate, with their legs, over a given period of time, it becomes clear why these crank things are useless.
You could possibly charge a phone with a cycling setup, I haven’t done the math in a while. What I recall is the human body makes for a terrible generator.
Humans are efficient, and there are also huge losses in converting the energy from work to electricity, and then further converting this to whatever voltage you actually need, while also likely first charging a battery somewhere so you can use it at a different time than you are cranking/pedaling…
However humans are also strong and can think of mechanisms that help with leverage and whatnot; for example an elliptical machine would probably be better than a bike.
With that being said the power you can generate is still pretty small; around 100Wh is floating around. If you worked out more you’d make more, obviously, but that might not be feasible.
It’d still be more than enough for essentials like charging your phone though.
100w/hr, cycling constantly? How much food does that require?
It’s just not realistic. As I mentioned, I’d read some math breaking down what a Tour d’France cyclist could do for a battery, and it was paltry.
Better off investing in solar at a rate of 5-10x your battery capacity. Then you can charge reasonably fast in most conditions.
Fair enough, good point.
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