Mechanical battery charger - pedal power!

A cycling generator doesn't produce that much usable wattage. 250 watts or so, and an average person wouldn't be able to do that for long. Some people can do more sustained, but at most 400 watts is the best 95% or so of the population can do. So, this means about 15-20 amps making it into the battery for charging. Which means that to have enough charge to spin my furnace's fan overnight, I'd have to be on the bicycle generator for almost as long.

I would consider a cycling generator as a last resort. It would be something to have... but something that is for dire worst case scenarios... and definitely not something for a RV, unless one had a trackstand and could compactly pack that up. I would sooner use the stoves that use reverse Peltier strips to do thermal-electric power generation. In a survival situation, last thing one needs, is to be completely exhausted.

OP here,
It was sort of a tongue in cheek post. Reading the comments on the youtube video and it is full of pessimism about it. I still like the idea though! I would be willing to make myself into the absorption part of the charging phase.

Yeah, well... It's true what he says in the video - half of the world has no electricity, but it's also true that it is darn hot in these parts of the world. You slowly walk around, talk a few minutes to somebody and your mouth is dry already and you can't think of anything but a glass of beer or mineral water from the fridge.

I would try everything else before pedaling - better energy conservation, more panels, wind generator. In this order.

According to my back of the envelope sorts of computations, a 15A charging current would equate to a reasonably strenuous aerobic workout for many people. You might be able to do a little more as a bicycle junkie, but it would still be a lot of work and time for typical RV electrical usage.

I agree with westend in that you probably want both--solar for practical recharging, and a bicycle setup as a diversion. Actually, if it were me, I would much prefer the solar to recharge the electricity and a normal bicycle so I could get out and exercise and enjoy the area where I'm camping. Staring at the dinette cushions for a few hours to recharge the RV battery really doesn't seem like a whole lot of fun.

ewarnerusa wrote:
I loved the whole process of researching and learning about solar battery charging and installing my own system on our camper. I'm also an absolute bicycle junkie. Rather than buy more panels, I think I want one of these.

http://nsmb.com/electricity-legs/
https://youtu.be/Cgb9lfKW_d4

Get both.

For me living with my 50% to 90% battery charge states I know it takes a DC Power source for three hours providing 14.4VDC with the capacity of 17-20AMPS DC Current for each battery being re-charged.

I guess a bicycle type power generator can provide this much current... Sounds like a lot of work getting after it for a three hour continuous work effort.

Now if you are going to use this idea to fire up a lamp for a couple of hours then this would work perhaps...

I would want to store the resulting energy into my battery banks so I can use then anytime I need the battery power. Battery charging science dictates how much DC VOLTAGE and DC Current you need to re-charge the batteries.

Just replacing a few watts for a short duration would most definitely not work for our off-road operations... I will not even think about starting a day/night battery operation unless I start out with at least a 90% battery charge state.

My daily goal is to use the batteries for all the things we want to run and not reduce the battery bank charge below the 50% charge state by 8AM each morning where we can have means to re-charge back up to the 90% charge state before we lose our resources including generator run times restrictions to charge batteries.

I experimented with several ideas like this back in my tent camping days with one method being to running an alternator with a water wheel in the nearby creek but could never get enough RPMs to make it work very good... Our goal back them was just create some lights to keep the bag full of D CELLS from getting all used up right away.

Todays LED lights kinda makes that an easy thing to do using D-CELLS for several days of use.

We run all kinds of flicker type LED lights all over our trailer at night. Excellent night lights with minimal current required to operate them.

Roy Ken

moved from technology