Monthly Archives: October 2011

The Energy Bike - The Ohio Energy Project

The energy bike aims to illustrate the concept of energy use.  By pedaling the bicycle, riders generate electricity via a generator. Depending on how hard you pedal, you can light sets of incandescent, compact fluorescent, or LED light bulbs along with various electronic devices.  The display effectively shows how much more energy is used to power incandescent bulbs than CFL or LED bulbs.

As the power consumption increases by turning on more bulbs or appliances, the bike becomes harder and harder to pedal.

Although the bulbs on the display put out nearly the same amount of light, the majority of the energy used by most light bulbs goes to creating heat with 90 percent of the energy used by incandescent bulbs going to thermal or heat energy and only ten percent going to providing light. The CFLs currently used are more efficient with about 60 percent of the energy they require going to creating heat and 40 percent of the energy going to providing light. LED bulbs are the most efficient wasting only about ten-20 percent of the energy they consume on creating heat with almost 90 percent going to creating light.

Be sure to look for the energy bike at Division of Energy of events.