Manoj Bhargava wants to change the world
October 7, 2015 5:45 AM Subscribe
Manoj Bhargava the inventor of 5 Hour Energy Drink (prev), wants to spend his billions fixing the world's problems.
The first big idea is to power our electronics with stationary bicycles. There's also a water purification system and a plan to use geothermal energy as a power source.
The first big idea is to power our electronics with stationary bicycles. There's also a water purification system and a plan to use geothermal energy as a power source.
Watched most of the documentary yesterday. His heart is definitely in the right place. I wish him luck.
That bike seems like a great idea. For a hundred dollars I want one. Though I have no place to put it.
posted by KaizenSoze at 6:08 AM on October 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
That bike seems like a great idea. For a hundred dollars I want one. Though I have no place to put it.
posted by KaizenSoze at 6:08 AM on October 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
I hope he's done the math on this. If you're going to power an entire household for a day on one hour's pedalling, you'd better have Brad Wiggins on call. And a few of his friends. A world class cyclist can put out about 400 watts for an hour. Wiggins did ~430 watts for his hour track record this year. That's a 100 watt lightbulb for 4 hours and 20 minutes or so. Appliances are inefficient.
Here's Robert Forstemann making toast.
posted by jimmythefish at 6:12 AM on October 7, 2015 [4 favorites]
Here's Robert Forstemann making toast.
posted by jimmythefish at 6:12 AM on October 7, 2015 [4 favorites]
200mg of caffeine and about 1.5ounces of placebo effect made all that money?
I think it's commendable that he's doing this but it might be better to funnel his money into fixing our totally broken governments (both in the US and elsewhere) because a few billion bucks is nothing compared to the size of our problems, and we need public investment on a massive scale, not the private windmill charging of a billionaire.
posted by dis_integration at 6:12 AM on October 7, 2015 [4 favorites]
I think it's commendable that he's doing this but it might be better to funnel his money into fixing our totally broken governments (both in the US and elsewhere) because a few billion bucks is nothing compared to the size of our problems, and we need public investment on a massive scale, not the private windmill charging of a billionaire.
posted by dis_integration at 6:12 AM on October 7, 2015 [4 favorites]
I am a programmer not an mechanical engineer. I wonder if the giant flywheel on Bhargava's bike helps generate a lot more power.
Starting at about 11:25 you can see him light up ten 100 watt light bulbs with the bike.
Again, I'm not a mechanical engineer.
posted by KaizenSoze at 6:25 AM on October 7, 2015
Starting at about 11:25 you can see him light up ten 100 watt light bulbs with the bike.
Again, I'm not a mechanical engineer.
posted by KaizenSoze at 6:25 AM on October 7, 2015
See, if you want to power the house with your bike, you're going to need a lot of energy...luckily, there's a drink for that! It's cyclical! Bicyclical, if you will.
posted by xingcat at 6:26 AM on October 7, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by xingcat at 6:26 AM on October 7, 2015 [5 favorites]
It would be cool to have one centralized huge flywheel with lots of bikes hooked up and people could climb on or off as needed.
posted by ian1977 at 6:38 AM on October 7, 2015
posted by ian1977 at 6:38 AM on October 7, 2015
In addition to the questionable marketing/legal tactics employed by Mr. Bhargava and his companies noted in the National Geographic article, the following two articles were published earlier this year:
March 26, 2015: Energy drink founder pours money into politics
March 27, 2015: [Governor] Snyder pardons well-connected lawyer that works for maker of 5-hour Energy drinks
Technical criticisms aside, one hopes that work like this is not simply positive PR in light of, in my opinion, a fairly objectionable instance of apparent cronyism.
posted by Ian.I.Am at 7:23 AM on October 7, 2015 [2 favorites]
March 26, 2015: Energy drink founder pours money into politics
March 27, 2015: [Governor] Snyder pardons well-connected lawyer that works for maker of 5-hour Energy drinks
Technical criticisms aside, one hopes that work like this is not simply positive PR in light of, in my opinion, a fairly objectionable instance of apparent cronyism.
posted by Ian.I.Am at 7:23 AM on October 7, 2015 [2 favorites]
A flywheel is a way to store energy, not a way to generate more.
Calories and Watt-hours are both measures of energy, so that makes it easy to do a little math.
Google says 1 Calorie (with a capital C, also known as a kilocalorie) is equal to 1.16222 Watt-hours. So if you burn 400 Calories cycling, and all of that energy is actually captured and stored by the bike (which is very optimistic), you could in theory run a 400 Watt light bulb (or four 100-Watt light bulbs) for 1.16222 hours. Which seems light roughly twice as long as it might take me to burn 400 Calories on a stationary bike? So at 50% efficiency you could really only keep that lightbulb on while you're pedalling.
Now probably this guy is thinking we'll bypass 400 Watt incandescent lights and just skip straight to LED lighting, in the target market. The internet tells me that, for instance, "The Philips 19 Watt AmbientLED replaces your standard 100 Watt incandescent" So you can run four of those for 6.116 hours on your four hundred Calories of pedaling. We're starting to get into "keep the lights on all day with an hour of pedaling" territory, here (assuming a very unrealistic 100% efficiency), but it's four pretty dim LED lightbulbs.
Not that you really need lights during the day if you've got windows. What you need is a laptop, right?
Wikipedia says that for the "One Laptop Per Child" computers "The laptop design specification goals are consumption of about 2 W of power during normal use, far less than the 10 W to 45 W of conventional laptops. With build 656, power consumption is between 5 and 8 watts measured on G1G1 laptop. Future software builds are expected to meet the 2-watt target." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLPC_XO )
Not sure if you can use your OLPC laptop to connect to WiFi and stream Netflix while still only drawing 2 Watts, but if you assume that you can at least do something which is useful with that kind of power draw (or will be able to within the next few years) then we're really getting somewhere. Your 464 Watt Hours will last you two weeks of using your laptop 16 hours per day! And then you just have to hop on the bike and burn another four hundred calories to get another two weeks! (Alternatively, you could use your 19 Watt LED and a 2 Watt OLPC laptop in the evenings just three hours a day for a week, with that same 464 Watt-hour pedal-charge.)
On the other hand... Appliances? The internet says refrigerators require about 100 Watts. So your 464 Watt-hour pedal charge will run your fridge for about 4.7 hours, I guess. The internet seems to say that an energy-efficient modern washing machine could run at 400 watts, so that's the same as the 400 watt lightbulb. 1.16 hours is probably long enough to do a load of laundry...
What I'm taking away from all this math is that this could work, but it's not the bike that needs the most innovation and development (though I don't know if you normally get 50% efficiency in which case just cut all my "total hours" numbers in half and they still seem sort of reasonable ... Or if it's 2%, in which case you really do need to put quite a lot of effort into the bike.) Ultimately, though, what will make something like this possible some day is all the work that a lot of engineers are currently putting into making lighting, laptops, refrigerators and washing machines a lot more energy efficient. That's the better place to invest your research dollars, if you've got them. Because it also makes solar and geothermal and wind and much-reduced coal-burning feasible.
Also I just want to note that after burning 400 Calories you'll probably be hungry. Ultimately, you're turning food Calories into electrical power (inefficiently) with this plan. Does the rural poor target market really have the food Calories to spare? And who has the time to do this? Are kids going to be forced to pedal while their parents work? There may be some unintended consequences to take into account before actually marketing something like this.
posted by OnceUponATime at 7:37 AM on October 7, 2015 [4 favorites]
Calories and Watt-hours are both measures of energy, so that makes it easy to do a little math.
Google says 1 Calorie (with a capital C, also known as a kilocalorie) is equal to 1.16222 Watt-hours. So if you burn 400 Calories cycling, and all of that energy is actually captured and stored by the bike (which is very optimistic), you could in theory run a 400 Watt light bulb (or four 100-Watt light bulbs) for 1.16222 hours. Which seems light roughly twice as long as it might take me to burn 400 Calories on a stationary bike? So at 50% efficiency you could really only keep that lightbulb on while you're pedalling.
Now probably this guy is thinking we'll bypass 400 Watt incandescent lights and just skip straight to LED lighting, in the target market. The internet tells me that, for instance, "The Philips 19 Watt AmbientLED replaces your standard 100 Watt incandescent" So you can run four of those for 6.116 hours on your four hundred Calories of pedaling. We're starting to get into "keep the lights on all day with an hour of pedaling" territory, here (assuming a very unrealistic 100% efficiency), but it's four pretty dim LED lightbulbs.
Not that you really need lights during the day if you've got windows. What you need is a laptop, right?
Wikipedia says that for the "One Laptop Per Child" computers "The laptop design specification goals are consumption of about 2 W of power during normal use, far less than the 10 W to 45 W of conventional laptops. With build 656, power consumption is between 5 and 8 watts measured on G1G1 laptop. Future software builds are expected to meet the 2-watt target." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLPC_XO )
Not sure if you can use your OLPC laptop to connect to WiFi and stream Netflix while still only drawing 2 Watts, but if you assume that you can at least do something which is useful with that kind of power draw (or will be able to within the next few years) then we're really getting somewhere. Your 464 Watt Hours will last you two weeks of using your laptop 16 hours per day! And then you just have to hop on the bike and burn another four hundred calories to get another two weeks! (Alternatively, you could use your 19 Watt LED and a 2 Watt OLPC laptop in the evenings just three hours a day for a week, with that same 464 Watt-hour pedal-charge.)
On the other hand... Appliances? The internet says refrigerators require about 100 Watts. So your 464 Watt-hour pedal charge will run your fridge for about 4.7 hours, I guess. The internet seems to say that an energy-efficient modern washing machine could run at 400 watts, so that's the same as the 400 watt lightbulb. 1.16 hours is probably long enough to do a load of laundry...
What I'm taking away from all this math is that this could work, but it's not the bike that needs the most innovation and development (though I don't know if you normally get 50% efficiency in which case just cut all my "total hours" numbers in half and they still seem sort of reasonable ... Or if it's 2%, in which case you really do need to put quite a lot of effort into the bike.) Ultimately, though, what will make something like this possible some day is all the work that a lot of engineers are currently putting into making lighting, laptops, refrigerators and washing machines a lot more energy efficient. That's the better place to invest your research dollars, if you've got them. Because it also makes solar and geothermal and wind and much-reduced coal-burning feasible.
Also I just want to note that after burning 400 Calories you'll probably be hungry. Ultimately, you're turning food Calories into electrical power (inefficiently) with this plan. Does the rural poor target market really have the food Calories to spare? And who has the time to do this? Are kids going to be forced to pedal while their parents work? There may be some unintended consequences to take into account before actually marketing something like this.
posted by OnceUponATime at 7:37 AM on October 7, 2015 [4 favorites]
Accidental billionaires are nothing if not optimistic.
All this late era capitalism positivism at least means we'll all destroy the planet with smiles on our faces.
posted by clvrmnky at 7:43 AM on October 7, 2015
All this late era capitalism positivism at least means we'll all destroy the planet with smiles on our faces.
posted by clvrmnky at 7:43 AM on October 7, 2015
I am a programmer not an mechanical engineer. I wonder if the giant flywheel on Bhargava's bike helps generate a lot more power.
The purpose of the flywheel in this setup is basically a buffer to maintain even output - kinetic energy of limb motion is translated into the rotational energy of the flywheel, which has a large mass and thus takes considerable force to spin up or down. This rotational energy is then steadily converted into electricity the same as the turbine in any power generator ever.
posted by Ryvar at 7:54 AM on October 7, 2015
The purpose of the flywheel in this setup is basically a buffer to maintain even output - kinetic energy of limb motion is translated into the rotational energy of the flywheel, which has a large mass and thus takes considerable force to spin up or down. This rotational energy is then steadily converted into electricity the same as the turbine in any power generator ever.
posted by Ryvar at 7:54 AM on October 7, 2015
Thanks for the all explanations.
posted by KaizenSoze at 7:58 AM on October 7, 2015
posted by KaizenSoze at 7:58 AM on October 7, 2015
OnceUponATime, fortunately there is a body of literature on the power output of athletes over time that is almost all measured via some sort of stationary bike. I'm at work, so I don't have citations in front of me, but suffice to say that expecting 400W of output for more than, IIRC, 10 minutes is unrealistic.
Using bikes for power generation is dumb. Just buy some solar panels or a wind turbine.
posted by indubitable at 8:41 AM on October 7, 2015 [2 favorites]
Using bikes for power generation is dumb. Just buy some solar panels or a wind turbine.
posted by indubitable at 8:41 AM on October 7, 2015 [2 favorites]
Who's using 400w incandescent bulbs in the home? I've got some LEDs, I can't remember the wattage. I think 27? I need 100+ watts or so equivalent. Anyways, yeah.
I saw this on Gilligan's Island, once.
Also? Bikes? Power?
I see where this is heading...
posted by symbioid at 8:51 AM on October 7, 2015 [4 favorites]
I saw this on Gilligan's Island, once.
Also? Bikes? Power?
I see where this is heading...
posted by symbioid at 8:51 AM on October 7, 2015 [4 favorites]
Metafilter: That is not how physics works.
posted by gottabefunky at 9:54 AM on October 7, 2015
posted by gottabefunky at 9:54 AM on October 7, 2015
“If you have wealth, it’s a duty to help those who don’t,” says Michigan resident Bhargava (FTA)
A-HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Not in AMURKA, commie! something something bootstraps
posted by xedrik at 12:11 PM on October 7, 2015
A-HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Not in AMURKA, commie! something something bootstraps
posted by xedrik at 12:11 PM on October 7, 2015
@idiopath, Positivism, in the sense of capitalism as natural law, with a dose of ascent of man (which can be argued is related to the switch from metaphysics to science as social drive.)
Capitalist Positivism is a rhetorical trick.
posted by clvrmnky at 12:40 PM on October 7, 2015
Capitalist Positivism is a rhetorical trick.
posted by clvrmnky at 12:40 PM on October 7, 2015
call me an impractical dreamer if you want, but nevertheless I for one believe that some day we'll be able to power all of our gadgets and appliances with the energy produced by the Prime Minister of the UK having sex with a pig.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:47 PM on October 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:47 PM on October 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
Starting at about 11:25 you can see him light up ten 100 watt light bulbs with the bike.
They say it's the equivalent of ten 100W light bulbs, which I'm pretty sure they mean incandescent. In fact it's an array of twenty-four 4W LED bulbs - you can see their labels at 8:51. So that's roughly 100W, which agrees with the dials that say 10V and 10A. And it doesn't take a top cyclist to output 100W.
And if you do that for an hour, you'll have enough to fill up maybe $40 worth of batteries, which also seems to be at least in the right ballpark if the whole bike costs $100. You're not going to run appliances off of that, but you could power a few of those bulbs all night. They also talk about charging phones and tablets - but they don't mention laptops. Though it does sound like the OLPC would be ok too.
The project of figuring out how to actually get these to people is the real challenge here - they invented no new technology in the bicycle itself.
posted by aubilenon at 5:02 PM on October 7, 2015
They say it's the equivalent of ten 100W light bulbs, which I'm pretty sure they mean incandescent. In fact it's an array of twenty-four 4W LED bulbs - you can see their labels at 8:51. So that's roughly 100W, which agrees with the dials that say 10V and 10A. And it doesn't take a top cyclist to output 100W.
And if you do that for an hour, you'll have enough to fill up maybe $40 worth of batteries, which also seems to be at least in the right ballpark if the whole bike costs $100. You're not going to run appliances off of that, but you could power a few of those bulbs all night. They also talk about charging phones and tablets - but they don't mention laptops. Though it does sound like the OLPC would be ok too.
The project of figuring out how to actually get these to people is the real challenge here - they invented no new technology in the bicycle itself.
posted by aubilenon at 5:02 PM on October 7, 2015
ok, so now that I'm home:
I'm working off the chart in Fig. 2.4 of the 3rd edition of Bicycling Science, which is in turn based on work found in NASA SP-3006 (1964), and oddly enough 400W seems to be right on the mark for a 10 minute effort from "first-class athletes".
Seriously, this is a dumb idea. It probably has more to do with this lottery winner's puritanical belief in salvation through hard work than any kind of rational analysis of renewable energy options.
posted by indubitable at 6:47 PM on October 7, 2015 [2 favorites]
I'm working off the chart in Fig. 2.4 of the 3rd edition of Bicycling Science, which is in turn based on work found in NASA SP-3006 (1964), and oddly enough 400W seems to be right on the mark for a 10 minute effort from "first-class athletes".
Seriously, this is a dumb idea. It probably has more to do with this lottery winner's puritanical belief in salvation through hard work than any kind of rational analysis of renewable energy options.
posted by indubitable at 6:47 PM on October 7, 2015 [2 favorites]
It probably has more to do with this lottery winner's puritanical belief in salvation through hard work than any kind of rational analysis of renewable energy options.
Hmm. I suppose for $100 you could instead get the same battery and a 50W solar panels. I watched that whole video and I think he did pooh-pooh solar or wind or something because of weather or reliability or something but that's what the battery's for.
posted by aubilenon at 7:07 PM on October 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
Hmm. I suppose for $100 you could instead get the same battery and a 50W solar panels. I watched that whole video and I think he did pooh-pooh solar or wind or something because of weather or reliability or something but that's what the battery's for.
posted by aubilenon at 7:07 PM on October 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
Please don't try to solve the world's problems, 5 Hour Energy dude. Odds are high that you'll just make them worse. We are basically drowning in unnecessary "innovations" to help poor black and brown people. I promise, most of them don't want to bike for 10 hours to power their lamp, or pull pucks of dehydrated shit out from their toilets once a week, or whatever the fuck other harebrained idea you're going to come up with. Go retire on a remote island somewhere.
posted by Ragini at 10:17 PM on October 7, 2015
posted by Ragini at 10:17 PM on October 7, 2015
Rooftop solar water heaters are popular in China. They're low-tech and low-cost. So there's one appliance that doesn't need to be bike-powered.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 3:40 AM on October 9, 2015
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 3:40 AM on October 9, 2015
« Older “...and at the time he was everybody’s favorite... | Hello, Darling. Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 5:52 AM on October 7, 2015 [11 favorites]