Ideas to Save the World - Whiskey Powered Homes

This is the kind of thing that warms the cockles of my heart. Taking a by product of, in this case a manufacturing process, and turning it into something that is even more useful to society is what I like to see. If you want to read the article the link is below...



To quickly summarize, the spent grains used to make whiskey, called draff, will be trucked no more then 25 miles to a site that will use it with a combination of wood chips to generate power for 9,000 homes in Speyside, Scotland. Another by-product of the process, pot ale, will be donated to distilleries and made into fertilizer and animal feed.

I love this idea, and in the future we will be seeing this more and more, which is a genuinely good thing. I love the idea that grains grow, harvested, made into whiskey and the residual products go back and power and fertilize the farmers that grow the grain.

Of course you must always take this with a grain of salt. The idea of it is great and I really hope it works, but does it? Will the energy required to produce the fertilizer exceed normal processes, making it more wasteful? Even if it does, is it better to have an organic fertilizer made from more energy? What is the consumption of wood chips required to be mixed with the Draff? Where is the wood sourced from?

When asking these questions, without getting any answers (haven't done any research), it can make the idea a bit depressing. I am essentially asking is the recycling process doing more harm than good? Sometimes the answer is yes, other times, it can be no. I hope this one is a firm yes when you balance all the equations. I love the idea of my power smelling like a bit Chivas in the distant wind.

Ideas to save the World - Gyms powering the Grid Pt 1

Here is one I have had for a while and quite like. You know those stationary bikes you pedal and they power a light bulb through the resistance or a small generator? What if every machine at the gym generated power based on the work you did. This isn't that radical an idea, after all ellipticals, rowing machines and stationary bikes are self powered, having a small generator that produces power and feeds the screen, with a small rechargeable cell to store excess power and draw power on breaks on the machine. The radical idea is having it on each machine including weight stacks.

Imagine it. You are going to the gym, and each person is expending energy to perform various forms of work. And every ounce of work being done is to tone and strengthen one's body. Health and vanity are prime reasons people go the gym, but what if the work you did generated electricity? Your not just working for you, your work out is indirectly benefiting everyone. I have no illusions that the power generated from one whole gym or a network of gyms would be enough to start shutting down gas power plants, but it could help reduce the amount of power those plants would have to use.

And talk about motivation, I imagine with your gym membership you are given a card that you plug into each machine and for as long as your card is in that machine and you are generating power, the amount you generate is recorded and acts as a credit to your gym membership. Go often enough and you could be going for free. If you are going to do it, the work you put in should be proportional to the amount of power generated. So heavy weights produce more power, but more reps at lighter weight can also equate to the same. Would make it easier for people to track their own individual workouts and energy output.

The machines would cost more, I mean it is going require flywheels, generators, cables, custom made pieces and magnets, to start, but with support from a government lobbyist group, long-term I am thinking tax rebates on the machines.

Now I have some ideas, and my buddy Craig and I have been talking and we think we can do this, so we are going to. Simple as that. I am now in the process of putting a team together to research, design and make a functioning model, so I can't go into any technical detail. But really if you read this blog and have any background in power generation, mechanical systems, electrical and control systems, and any practical machine and electrical design knowledge I bet you could probably come to some of the same design solutions that I have.

So from here, team, research, design, bankroll, working model. Then the business stuff, but being an engineer that is always secondary to a design that speaks for itself.

Making it work is easy enough, making it the new norm is the endgame and that will be hard. But any one that knows me knows I like hard.