Thanks James, I wish I could take credit for it. Probably over 50 years ago I read about a guy doing this in Popular Mechanics or Popular Science and wanted to try it. He had the same idea as you... As I recall, he let his kids watch as much TV on Saturday morning as they wanted as long as they pedaled the bike generator he built and charged up the batteries enough.
I need to make one of those bike generators. I have an EB3A and have been using it to run my laptop and home server off of solar power, but I did experiment with my treadmill. I disconnected the motor from the electronics and wired it to the EB3A, and walking on it generates 50+ watts if I really start pushing hard, but it's very difficult to walk on a treadmill to produce energy due to friction. A bike would be much better for actual exercise long term.
No matter how you manage to physically create electricity and put it in a battery or even use it up without a battery, it's a lot of work. I've also used a treadmill the same way you described and it is hard. Most people have no idea how much effort even 1 watt of power takes to create. Years ago I visited the National Renewable Energy Research Laboratory in Golden, CO and they had a display where you could hand crank a light bulb. Most of the people I watched were quite surprised at the effort required. I suppose I should make a little more detailed video on the generator but it really is a pretty simple setup.
Looks like if you pedal when fridge is running (usually about 15 minutes out of every hour) you just may be able to keep up. Hope you've got some delicious goodies in there because that's a pretty big commitment. Good job, thanks 👍
Jim e, I doubt there are many people around who would want to do something like that. I guess if I had hundreds of dollars worth of meat or something in the fridge and had no other alternatives, I might be able to do that. I never ran the fridge long enough to see how much wattage it uses when it's in the defrost cycle but I know when that's running it typically draws much more power. I did another video a while ago and it's mainly about the pedal generator. I may have to see if I still have it and post it. Thanks for the comment!
Very nice. Are you able to change gears in order to gain voltage? I'm sure it would charge faster if you could get it up around the 25 volt range. How about the resistance on the pedals; do you feel more resistance when the battery (eb3a) is further depleted rather than around 90% full?
Thanks. If you listen at 6:10 in the video I'm shifting to the highest gear. That bike is a Diamondback Edgewood hybrid and in the highest gear it's a 49 tooth driving a 14 tooth on a 700c tire. I haven't tried charging when the EB3A is any lower but I doubt it would change much since you always have an MPPT controller between that input and whatever is supplying the the charge. I'll try to find some time to try it!
I've been experimenting with different solutions and various voltages between 12 and 28 volts to supply the mppt controller of my eb3a. What I find is the way the controller curve in this unit is set up, I always get for more input when the voltage is on the higher end of the input range (20vdc+) I've also noticed that the conroller always seems to slow the charge, no matter what the input, as the battery gets closer to full. This is a good thing, because slowing the charge as the battery reaches full will prolong the lifespan of already amazing liFePo4 batteries. The reason I mention this is, because of the dynamics of the charging curve the controller is providing, it would be interesting to know how much your results would change if you were to run this same test at lower starting depth of discharge on the eb3a; say 50%, which would put the controller in a condition that would allow it to take the max input. Cheers
The cigg adapter I bought came with a 3A fuse that kept blowing. I had some spare 3A fuses but they kept blowing too, so I bought some 10A & 15A fuses but it only let me charge at about 50 max. What amperage fuse did your cigg adapter come with??? You’re getting practically twice the amount of charge as I’m getting 🤷🏽♂️
There are a lot of different motors that would work and produce usable energy. The treadmill motor I used just happened to work very well and was fairly easy to add to the bike stand. Just now I've found almost a dozen free treadmills listed on Nextdoor and Facebook Marketplace and those are good places to look for cheap bike stands.
Huge waste of money. Actual useable Watts. About 240 ! Real life usage. What would you want to leave on for 7 hrs? A 500W heater. This Bluetti will not power it but for 1.75 hrs tops. What about a TV for 6hrs? Hmmm? Then you must recharge it. Waste of money. Look at it this way. Nobody's talking about this low Watt available over the long haul for the nite or day. 240W ÷ 7 hrs = 34 W useable per hr before it's empty. Nobody's talking about this talking point.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I was fully aware of what was included when I purchased the EB3A and so far it has lived up to it's promised performance.
