Of course, you would have to pay that big guy with a whip a bit more than the others and if anybody farts adding methane to the atmosphere he should be penalized.

A healthy human cyclist can generate about 200 watts continuously. At that rate, it would 5 hours to generate 1 kw/hr of electricity. With electricity costing around 10-12 cents per kw/hr, a human would not be able to make more than $0.20 per day. That won't buy much bread. Plus, a person generating power this way would need to eat a lot more bread than normal to provide the necessary calories.

hm, at 20 cents a day, this could make economic sense... in AFRICA! JK

As silly as your suggestion is at face value, it has some merit if you consider the idea of having spas and gyms utilize the wasted energy of exercise machines and such. Would it be possible to wire gyms so that they can produce some of their own electricity? Gym users could get discounts on their energy bills based on their power creation at the gym...or something.

The concept may sound silly - You never know when, a higly efficientmechano- electro gizmo may be lurking, which make this concept a reality.

I like this idea, albeit with the maths done by Dwane above, it would seem impractical. Shame really.

Ok, so a one man team cant generate alot of energy. What about a 300 man team, with 6 teams of 50 pushing, or pulling some oversized 1,000 lbs lever, (which is 20lbs per person, per team and would look something like the movie conan the barbarian) that could turn small gears, that turn smaller gears, and somewhere along the line create electricity. If you need more power, build it bigger. People would do it for half hour shifts, half hour break, shifts of 4 hours or something like that.

Hell, it could even get membership status since it would be good for the body. Just look at Conan!! lol

That's pretty cool actually.. in fact there are lots of ways people can generate electricity. One way is the Matrix way, and then they can pedal, and their releases can also be used as an energy source. Heck, we can solve the global warming problem!

Green energy need not be cheap. It would reduce global warming whilemelting your fat away

I have always observed that young children have a lot more energy than they seem to need for any practical purpose. Too bad we can't figure out a way to harness that energy to generage electricity. Put them in a play place like the old Discovery Zone chain and let them go.

A Indian worker is paid about 5 USD a day for unskilled work.It may not make horse sense but can add to the carbon credit.

Every watt you get in electricity from human power has to be replaced with food. One kilowatt-hour equals 860 kilocalories, which is what we measure food in.

Unless you can find alot of overweight people that already have extra calories to spend, you'll be buying a few more meals for your $5/day exercisers. Yes, we have those people in the US, but those types are not likely to be interested in pedaling for most of a day.