(Pics) Home Brewing Electricity With A Bicycle

Pratt student and designer Elizabeth Joy Wong has built a simple bicycle powered generator that could be used nearly anywhere. Using the device is easy – pedaling the bike causes a friction drum to spin an alternator, which generates electricity. A battery pack stores the power for later use.

There is no word whether this model is fully functional, but other designs on the market, such as the Pedal-A-Watt, can generate enough juice to power small appliances (and provide a good work out).

The Pedal-A-Watt site explains more:

Watts is an instantaneous measure of power at any moment in time. Watt-hours is a measure of power over time.

For example, the Pedal-A-Watt, creates 200 watts of power. If you pedal for 2 hours, then you have created 400 watt-hours ( 200 watts x 2 hours) of power.

This 400 watt-hours would power a 100 watt light bulb for 4 hours, a 200 watt large screen TV for 2 hours and so on.

[via ecofriend]