How To Build A Bicycle Generator

How To Build A Bicycle Generator
Nov 12, 2012 | Alt-Market

This article was originally published at Waking Times

Building your own generator requires a number of items. A person, a bike, a way of supporting your bike off the ground, a motor, an energy smoothing system and an inverter if you want to use your bike generator to power mains equipment. Each of these parts needs to work efficiently in order to generate between 50 and 100 watts of usable energy for your generator.

REMEMBER TO BE CAREFUL WHEN WORKING WITH ELECTRICITY – IF IN DOUBT, ASK AN ELECTRICIAN

We’ll discuss the parts and how to assemble a single bike generator in this D.I.Y. Guide which you can download as a PDF here.

1. PEOPLE

At the end of the day if there are no motivated cyclists you cannot create electricity. Each person can create between 20 and 100 watts over extended periods and we’ve got as much as 250w from athletes in short bursts. It’s also more fun doing things together so get your friends round to give you a hand!

2. A BICYCLE

Type of bike:

Road bikes are most suitable type of bike for generating electricity because they have slick tires. Slick tires help keep friction and noise to a minimum level. Road bikes are designed to be efficient on smooth roads. You will generally get more watts from a road bike than a town (designed for comfort) or a mountain bike (designed for bumps and bashes).

Gears:

Geared bikes have the advantage that cyclists of different abilities can use them.

• Single speed bikes have the advantage that the cyclist cannot change gear and make life easier for him/herself. Therefore you can almost guarantee the same power out from each person.

Magnificent Revolution has a set of second hand road bikes. You can get a good bike for just over £100. We got ours from places such as the Bicycle Ambulance in Cambridge and Bike Works in London.

Read complete instructions..