xtrpickels wrote:
Titanflexr wrote:
The economics are, at best, marginal.
Residential power is about $0.13/kwh
You have to ride at 200W for 5hrs to generate 1kwh
An inverter (to convert the DC power to something you can pipe back into the grid) would add ~$200 to the retail cost of a trainer....if not more.
Given the above, it would hit break even after ~8,000hrs of riding. The typical work year 40hrs/wk is 2,000hrs.
1kwh is a pound of coal.
If Zwift alone has 5,000 concurrent users, that's 1,000 pounds of coal that's not used to make electricity per hour.
24,000 lbs of coal not burnt per day
50,000 lbs of C02 not released into the atmosphere.
Every day.
Yes, that what is saved. To get that, every smart trainer would need to have the ability to feed power back into the grid. There is no efficiency of scale (every additional user requires an additional trainer/inverter).
My point is that exercise equipment doesn't have these regenerative features because the economics don't support them. Reducing emissions is a laudable goal, but there won't be much market appetite for negative ROI solutions. Right now even positive ROI solutions like home-based solar and EVs are slow to get traction due to long payback periods.
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