Project Overview
As renewable energy technologies continue to develop, new ways to generate electricity have been implemented. The owner of Outpost Sports in Mishawaka would like to generate electricity from his bicycling training facility. The facility allows eight riders to bring in their bikes to train during the winter. The back wheel of the bike is held in a frame in contact with a braking system to provide resistance. Currently, this energy is all lost to heat. This project is an opportunity to use energy that is already there in a useful way. If all of the energy from the eight riders could be converted to electricity, it would be enough to power ten 100 W bulbs for an hour. ElecTrek's goal is to work with the current system to achieve this conversion by adding components that capture the energy as electricity and store it in a battery or use it during the session to power a device such as a fan or an iPod.