Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Enegy Crisis: Solved

Japan's recent problems with the safety of its nuclear energy program have gotten number of folks in the US wondering how safe nuclear power is. Are our current facilities equipped to handle a natural disaster without a complete meltdown? How will we meet the power demands of the future if not for nuclear energy?

Well, I've also heard that this nation is under a somewhat large obesity epidemic. I think we can kill 2 birds with one stone here.

Why not make a different kind of gym that effectively works as a power plant? With really cheap (possibly free) dues, get a whole bunch of folks who want to work out together, give them some equipment to use that converts their mechanical energy into electrical energy, and voila. People lose weight, the community gets power.

Essentially, all we're doing is repurposing the stored energy in folks excess fat cells and using it to do more useful work. Like power my Xbox.

And folks nowadays pay tons of money for the privilege to go to these gyms that actually use electricity to help these folks run around. What a waste of energy!

I really think this could work. Either it's a brilliant new idea, or someone else thought of it and the economics don't work out. Which I'd believe. I'm not sure how much the electric company pays folks for adding power to their grid, but be biking for 45 minutes probably isn't a whole lot of power...

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