Unlimited Green Power

Tonight I watched one of my favorite movies, Monster's Inc. I laughed and laughed but having that chronic condition known to most as being an adult I was unable to see it purely as childish fun. I was smacked in the face with bigger issues like power supply and demand, the problems we create by harnessing power, the importance of making better choices that will garner us more power with less destruction to feed our ever growing consumption and even more humanely poignant the pure power of laughter on the soul.

And no I am not about to suggest that the unlimited green power we should harness is laughter. In fact it is such a ridiculously simple idea that I can't believe it hasn't been implemented yet. Well a small group of people have actually used it because I've seen it done on a very small scale in a television show called Life With Ed.

Somewhere in Studio City, California Ed Begley Jr. lives with his lovely wife and child in a not so impressive for his stature kind of house. He happens to live near Bill Nye the science guy and they have a little friendly competition going to see who can be the greenest. Because we live in the age of reality television someone decided all things Ed would make compelling television and they were quite right! We get to see how Ed works recycling and go green technology into every aspect of his everyday life sometimes to the chagrin of his wife and child. Solar power, wind power, collecting and using rain water, devoid of lawn because he is growing vegetables that can be eaten and require less water and no gas guzzling lawn mower are all front and center. He rides his bike everywhere and will drive his Prius virtually cross country before he takes a plane. He buys offsets when he does something he finds consumptively vulgar. He remodeled an office and recycled just about everything he ripped out while everything he put in was created from something that was already recycled!

And what does that have to do with unlimited power besides the stuff we already know about? Ed likes toast. Yeah toast! (Ha! I kill me... some of you may get that reference others should google it.) He likes a lot but he doesn't like plugging in the toaster and going on the grid to make it so instead he hops on a now stationary ten speed hooked up to his toaster and he pedals until there is enough of a charge to make toast. Yep that's it. Pedal until you can make toast. Well okay it's not that simple, but then again it really is.

Go with me for a second, I know the plan isn't truly for unlimited green power but seriously think off all you could do. For example it takes 45 minutes to cook chicken in the oven while you wait for it to cook you are watching the news. What if you were watching from a bike that was hooked to your oven and you pedaled while watching? It takes ten minutes to shower and another ten to dry your hair what if while you were in the shower you were walking on rollers that stored power in a battery that then ran you hair dryer? Okay so that one is a bit crazy because I can fall in a flat shower never mind one with a rolling floor and it takes about 20 minutes to dry my mane but you get the idea. Walking back and forth from one end of the house to the other putting laundry away you could be on a pulley system that rotated a turbine that in turn created power for the radio you are listening to. Pedals, rollers, and pulleys in strategic places can become power tools!

So aside from having your home and appliances re-engineered in a complete overhaul what if we had power companies that were actually gyms? I pay to belong to the gym where I spend an hour and burn about 600 calories at a time. Let's start at the beginning though we would first need to revamp the gym, no more electric run equipment. Everything is human powered, again with the pedals, pulleys and rollers. Everyone gets hooked up to a portable monitor when they walk in and as they exercise their burned calories are converted to watts and sent out to the grid. Membership to these substation type gyms would be free and you would then get ½ of what you put in as a credit back on your own electric usage. You get lean while you create clean energy. More efficient methods of power conversion would become the next technological boon and create jobs! Oh and let's say for the sake of argument all of this new stuff was actually manufactured in the USA. May as well tick as many of our national problems off the list as we can with one great idea right?

Think of the numbers game this could become!!!!! 45 million American's have gym memberships (15% of the population); of them about 50 percent quit in the first six months but how would that number change if it paid them two fold instead of them paying at all? Mini gyms in neighborhoods within walking distance or strategically located in high traffic areas so they would be easily accessible when you were on your way to or from work... Expound on that! There is a 32% obesity rate in this country if exercising means you get to eat cooked chicken wouldn't you? The ramifications of this type of program are mind boggling! We could have more clean power with a more physically fit citizenship, lowered electric bills, lowered medical costs... It's the trickle-down theory in full effect!

Okay my work here is done. I've given all of you who are smarter than me, my engineering friends, my already green friends, my gym rat friends, THE billion dollar idea. Get to making it happen!

Be safe.