Hamster Power. Is it the solution?

[Slobadog]

Houses can collect solar power to help power themselves. But not when the sun goes down. But that is when the hamsters wake up. So i'm thinking that maybe the hamsters run on their wheels and the motion of the wheels in turn generates electricity.


A good idea?

 

[ParadigmShifter]

I think you know the answer to your question. (HINT: Probably not).

 

[Slobadog]

I have indeed thought of a few flaws already.

 

[warpus]

Yeah, your house would smell like hamster shite

 

[Aramazd]

Also, you have to feed the hamsters. It would probably take more energy to deliver the food and cart away the droppings, then the amount of energy produced.

 

[Knight-Dragon]

A better solution will be to use humans. We have quite a lot of those lying around, just spamming/flaming/trolling at CFC or surfing or playing WoW or watching TV or sleeping (basically doing nothing productive).

Make them run on threadmills that are connected to generators or something, and produced electricity to be stored on batteries.

It will keep obesity down, providing a heathier lifestyle to the humans to boot.

 

[zxcvbnm]

I think bicycles would be better than treadmills, the energy efficiency is much higher, especially if the feet are fastened to the pedals.

 

[Cutlass]

If you want to buy enough batteries, you can run the night on solar power.

 

[taper]

One of many hits from Google. They don't give exact power details, but one hamster produces a fraction of a watt. As for cost, I can keep a 100 watt light bulb lit for 10 hours for 7 cents. You'd need around 1000 hamsters running at once to do this, but since a hamster can't run for 10 hours in a row, you'd need thousands more to run in shifts. I don't know how much hamster feed costs, but I'm guessing more than 7 cents a day for a few thousand of them.

 

[Slobadog]

I figured as much. But i figured i'd ask just to make sure. But no harm in bringing the idea up, right?

 

[taper]

It might be worth doing just to see the look on people's faces when they walk into your house.

 

[dutchfire]

you'd be better of burning the food the hamsters would eat in a powerplant.

 

[Ur_Vile_Wedge]

I agree, people would work better. My suggestion is to issue out maybe 30"value" lottery tickets to people who agree to run on the wheels for an hour.

All of these tickets would be for the day before's lottery, so the cost would be zero, until you run out of gullible morons. By that time, we'll probably have worked out all the bugs with solar power/fuel cell technology.

 

[zxcvbnm]

Not run on the wheels, but cycle.

 

[Swedishguy]

Pikachu Power. Is it the solution?

 

[Narz]

I think bicycles would be better than treadmills, the energy efficiency is much higher, especially if the feet are fastened to the pedals.

I know a guy (not personally, on another forum) who generates part of his electricity with a stationary bike.

One also might rig up some sort of upper body workout device to create electricity.

Honestly, if I bought a home, I would be very tempted to set up some sort of system like this for power. That way, missing a workout simply is not an option.

 

[Souron]

I'd recommend using a rowing machine for best results.

 

[Narz]

Yeah, that's why I was thinking of.

 

[Dubai Vol]

People just don't appreciate how cheap electricity is.

Some here are saying people on bicycles. OK, a Lance Armstrong can generate maybe half a horsepower, 375 watts. You may do half that if you're good, but let's just say you could do 333 watts to keep the numbers simple. So in 3 hours you generate 1 kWh. You could buy that kilowatt hour from the electric company for less than a dime. So again, to keep the numbers simple, are you really going to do hard physical labor for 3 cents an hour?

You may burn a bit more on a rowing machine, but you're not going to "earn" more than 5 cents an hour no matter what, and most likely a lot less than that. A penny an hour would be more likely.

 

[Ur_Vile_Wedge]

That's why I like my idea. You shaft stupid people, against whom its been legal to discriminate for ages! It's free, free I tell you.