Rather than using a battery, I would like to feed the generated power back into my wall socket and have an amp-meter read-out attached inline for psychological satisfaction. It seems to me that this would save on parts and maybe even be more efficient.

But I'm no EE. I assume it's possible to do - but what would it take to convert the energy appropriately/safely? How much energy would be wasted in the conversion to 120v ac over other applications? I also assume that any modern household circuit could safely handle the additional supply from pedal power.

"Dynapods"[edit source]

"This pedal-powered contraption can run a computer, split logs, or churn butter"

http://grist.org/list/this-pedal-powered-contraption-can-run-a-computer-split-logs-or-churn-butter/

An average adult can pedal it to generate 100 watts of electricity, pump 5 gallons of water per minute, grind a variety of grains, operate an air compressor, a hydraulic pump, most any hand-cranked machine, and a variety of small shop tools. It has been found to be particularly suitable for small scale agricultural applications such as cracking grains, churning butter, and pumping water.

Writtenonsand 14:01, 24 May 2013 (PDT)

Renaming from "Pedal power howto" to "How to make a bicycle generator"[edit source]

The reasons for renaming were:

  • This page was getting practically no organic traffic
  • The introduction stated it was a guide to build any type of pedal powered device but the content was more of a guide to build an electrical pedal powered device.
  • Despite previous point, a name like "How to build an electrical pedal powered device" has less chances of getting organic traffic than "How to make a bicycle generator" because:
    • There are no searches for "electric pedal power" or "electrical pedal power"
    • There are searches for "pedal power generator" but it has a Keyword difficulty of 42 (hard) and a global search volume of 900.
    • The keyword "bicycle generator" has a KD of 27 (medium) and a global search volume of 2.8K
    • The question "how to make a bicycle generator" has twice as much search volume than "how to build a bicycle generator" (although neither has a high search volume)
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