Exercise bikes-electricity generators as an element of "green marketing"

These are ordinary exercise bikes. How much energy can they generate if they add a generator?

In Sacramento, California, this month opened a new gym. Its difference from the usual halls is that all the exercise bikes installed in the premises are equipped with electricity generators. According to the company's management, the electricity generated by customers will not only help recoup the cost of purchasing simulators, but also reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The idea that pedaling will help nature, according to the hall management, can contribute to more effective training of visitors.

According to Sacramento Eco Fitness estimates, in just one year, visitors will help the hall save about $ 26,000, which will cover the costs of 15 eco-simulators purchased earlier. Everything sounds just fabulous, but isn't all of this fantastic? According to one of the users of the network, who ran into the calculations of the management of the hall, the calculations really do not correspond to reality.

Moreover, the calculations themselves were carried out back in 2011, so it wasn’t necessary to perform all the calculations anew. Then the engineer Tom Gibson estimated the power of the "human power plant" at 50-150 W per hour. This is hardly enough to provide the hall with electricity and save as much as $ 26,000 in a year. A number of netizens who participated in the discussion of the idea of ​​“ekosala” stated that all this is pure marketing, not economy. More or less realistic calculations show that it is necessary for users of the hall to sweat on simulators for decades in order to recoup the company's expenses for the purchase of eco-simulators.
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And indeed, the other day, the founder of Eco Fitness explained that the idea was not to save a lot of money. “We want our clients to be proud of their work on the simulators every time classes start,” he said.

By the way, the simulators installed in the gym are manufactured by SportsArt, which was founded in 1978 in Taiwan. ECO-POWR SportsArt simulators produce a current with a voltage of 120 V. The system is equipped with a converter that converts the alternator direct current into alternating current with a frequency of 60 Hz. The current is fed into the grid of the room, which allows the use of generated energy.

But if you think about who extracts the maximum profit from the idea of ​​creating exercise bikes that generate electricity, it becomes clear that the main "beneficiary" is the manufacturer, the company SportsArt. The cost of the systems supplied by the company ranges from $ 2,795 to $ 7,395, which is significantly higher than the cost of conventional simulators. The SportsArt ECO-POWR exercise bikes are also equipped with a mobile application that allows you to calculate the amount of energy generated by the system.

Guide gym recently announced the price of a monthly subscription. It is $ 80 per month, which is cheaper than in the class of "luxury" class, but two times higher than in conventional gyms, located in the vicinity. This is already, as far as can be understood, and will help the hall recover the money spent faster. And the clients of the hall will be people who are worried about environmental problems and who decide, albeit at a higher cost of subscription, to help nature (although in this case it is not entirely clear how the production of a small amount of energy can positively affect the state of the environment). All this is more like "green" marketing, which is becoming more popular than the real intention to somehow reduce the anthropogenic burden on nature.



Of course, the hall will receive some amount of energy thanks to its visitors. So, on the day 15 simulators will work 3 times for 45 minutes. This will provide 400 to 800 watts of energy during each cycle. According to the management of the hall, this amount of energy is enough to ensure the functioning of the coffee machine, two TVs and two laptops.

The owner of the hall also says that the room in the daytime uses almost exclusively sunlight for illumination, and not illumination using electricity. In the future, the building where the hall is located is planned to be equipped with solar panels, which will increase the generation of electricity and reduce the load on the power grid.

Anyway, this is still very different from the initial statement about the possibility of saving thousands of dollars on energy consumption. Greg Kremer, an engineer from Ohio University, argues that the energy production of systems like the simulators mentioned above is extremely small. “If you want to save energy and work physically, take a regular bike and ride it to work and study - both physical exertion will be significant and energy use will be minimal. This is real savings. ” Probably, it would be difficult to disagree with the opinion of Kremer.

At the same time, green marketing is thriving now, and this will have to be tolerated for a very long time.