Re: bowling for cars

Peter Corlett <abuse@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Satya <satyap@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[...]
Oooh, train-style main lamp and ditch lights on bicycles. Train-strength,
too. And train horn. ISAGN.

How much power could one usefully carry and/or generate on a bike?

ISTR that your average human can produce about 100 W steady-state. I
don't know offhand what the typical power requirements are just to keep
the bike wheels turning.

Randomly-googling for small leisure batteries and a back-of-an-envelope
calculation suggests a power budget of about 200-300W for a one hour
commute.

If you wanted to run 300 W of lights for an hour from a 12 V sealed lead-
acid battery (aka "gel cell"), you're looking at about 14 to 18 kg (30 to
40 pounds) of battery. NiMH might cut this down to 6 kg or so. If the
300 W figure assumes incandescent lamps, another way to optimize for
minimum battery mass would be to use HID for whitish light and LED for
colo(u)red light.

Matt Roberds

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