It may sound stupid. Anyway,i am not sending a man to the moon.This may be ideal for countries with huge manpower like India and China where millions are jobless.
2006-09-09 08:21:15 · 17 answers · asked by indiananytime 2 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Engineering
Ofcourse we generate power manually by our cycle dynamos. Similar concept in a large scale where 1000 people can work and generate.
2006-09-09 08:37:15 · update #1
It is certainly possible to design. The concerns you have to address are efficiency, output, and cost effectiveness. I believe these will cause your design to be unusable.
What you are talking about, is to use man as a power converter, from the chemical energy stored in the human body, to electrical energy. Using a block-diagram approach, the energy path for your power plant is:
Food -Man-> Mechanical Motion -Generator-> Electrical Energy.
The main concern I can see is economic, whether or not you can SELL the Electrical Energy for a high enough value, in order to PAY the manpower enough to eat.
The most cost-effective method, would be to open the doors to any able-bodied person, 'Come, work for 4 hours, eat a meal'. You'd be catering to the starving and hungry, in exchange for some work from them. The cost of food would, most likely, outweigh any amount of electrical energy you could produce.
2006-09-09 08:38:22 · answer #1 · answered by Matt 2 · 2⤊ 0⤋
It's possible but not practical. Without any other energy would mean no nuclear,hydro, fossil fuel, solar, tidal or wind could be used. It's possible now to power some electric appliances like a TV while riding a bike. I suppose you could get a bunch of bikes, hook them up in series and have people ride them in shifts around the clock. You could produce electricity and keep in shape at the same time. The problem is that human powered electricity would be the most expensive of all and I am not sure any government can afford that. You would have to pay them and it would need a lot of them to produce any amount of electricity. If they ever went on strike you would have a blackout. Factor in lunch breaks and bathroom breaks and you begin to see how impractical it how becomes.
2006-09-09 15:50:07 · answer #2 · answered by imstrngr 1 · 2⤊ 0⤋
The problem might be to create anything so large scale that you can reach sufficiently high voltage levels so that transport losses of electricity become not ridiculous.
But this I think can be solved.
Small scale exists already. check http://www.windstreampower.com/humanpower/ppg.html
Suppose you are well trained, and you can sustain 250 W generation for 8 hours, you've produced 2 kWh electricity. Say the value is 10 US$cts/kWh you have produced 20 US$cts. For arguments sake let's assume you get paid 14 US$cts/day (NOT BAD !)
Then we have to replace the old poverty limit of 1 US$/day with a new one: 1 US$/week.
You will die outof poverty but with excellent fitness!
2006-09-10 17:27:26 · answer #3 · answered by Sjors d 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Nothing wrong in thinking something different. May be you can setup a hydroelectric power station near the sea, and you need to set up giant artificial waterfalls to run the turbines.Next, you have to setup giant pumps to manually pump water to the top of a huge reservoir.
So,some mechanical genius should design a big manual water pump in the first place.This way, in theory, it is definitely possible to utilise manual force to pump water to fill the reservoir.Not a bad idea.
2006-09-09 23:42:00 · answer #4 · answered by liketoaskq 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
While the whole world is thinking of how to relieve man from hard work by inventing new technologies, your question seems to be two hundred years old, when colonists asked slave-human to extract oil from nuts. By the way, considering the power requirement, your question can have either "yes" or "no" as an answer.
2006-09-10 11:38:06 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
no u cant...
coz u need to run the turbines and all...
if u r using the concept of dynamo etc, still the ans is u cant
coz it also includes handling of steam at particular pressure, vapour pressure, temperature etc etc which cant be handled by persons n u need to ve machines for that....
so there is no way u can generate it.. by the way, still if u think u can, pls do lemme know coz i ll do a research on it as i m into mech engg
2006-09-09 22:29:15 · answer #6 · answered by Praful M Nimbargi 2 · 1⤊ 1⤋
Every human produces about 100 Watts of heat. If you could harness that and make people into living batteries you might be on to something. Then, to keep them occupied, you could feed their minds with the illusion that they are living a normal healthy life.
2006-09-09 22:50:15 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
The old phrase is" there is no such thing as a free lunch". Having said that, we can go to the well known resources for research, IE, solar,hydroelectric,tidal driven turbines,wind generators, etc.
2006-09-09 22:19:22 · answer #8 · answered by Scrubber 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
YES. asong as the turbine which turns the coil in the magnet is turning electricity is being produced and so yes if peopel where to turn the turbine then it would need no form of external power
2006-09-09 15:36:04 · answer #9 · answered by justifier_mk 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
generated power manually by our cycle dynamos are inconsistent. nobody likes power received like that in an always fluctuating form.
2006-09-09 18:40:46 · answer #10 · answered by CSK 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋