Inlet-Outlet: Powering your house with exercise
Imagine using your exercise bike to help power your house or even create enough energy to feed back to the grid. A new specialty wall outlet will allow you to do just that.
Core 77 is holding a Greener Gadgets competition that has prompted some interesting ideas. One of the most interesting is an idea by Carla Diana and Jeff Hoefs called The Inlet “Outlet”.
The concept is rather intuitive. Rather than simply sucking power from outlets, why not create “inlets” that would allow you to give some power back. There are myriad ways that various items in your house could actually become energy sources either for selling energy back to the grid or storing it in batteries for future use.
The most obvious items are kinetic energy ones such as an exercise bike. You could “ride” your way to extra hours of energy. Simply hop on and pedal. Imagine how much electricity could be generated in your local gym when everyone shows up to start getting a workout.
Two other exercise options are discussed in the application. One is a trampoline, which opens up a wide variety of kinetic/capture options. The second is harnessing the power of your hamster, also included in the application and a bit on the cheeky side.
Other sources would be capturing the heat that emanates from a stove, refrigerator or dryer and converting that back into energy for the grid. Special adaptors would be needed but would work quite well.
Inlets would be next to outlets with special plugs so that you didn’t accidentally plug into the wrong socket by mistake. Each would have separate wiring to carry energy loads to and from the house.
Admittedly this “green gadget” would require some wiring modifications of most homes or gyms but the ultimate energy created might cover the renovation costs. Probably not, but this would be a great addition to future housing.
For anyone living in an area where the electricity goes out once or twice a year, this might be one way to power up back up batteries so you can run your electronics until the power company gets the juice turned back on.
Overall, it is an intriguing idea that may hold a great deal of future promise for generating energy to feed back to the grid. Once they find an adapter for small children, we may no longer have an energy crisis.
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February 8th, 2009
Susan, can I remind you that the date is February 8, not April 1.
Save ridiculous stories like this one until then, please…