another ide kinetic energy

There you have it! You are a genius my friend! Attach all playgrounds directly to the electrical grid. Why haven't anybody thought about that before?

the idea that vhawk had that everybody can do their little effort is not stupid, it's really good, collectively we can produce alot of energy!

 

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Jesus! do you know how much power could be sapped from children! They can run around in circles as full speed for hours, giggle crazily! I think we are really on to something!

 

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yeesh. not a good idea.

 

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there is certainly that but the parents might object to their children being treated as generators. some playgrounds have little merry-go-rounds which the children happily push round faster and faster while their chums sit on them

 

very decent of you to say so, not being a scientist most of my ideas are impractical. I have visions of a gigantic flywheel being got up to speed and made to turn really fast just by human energy, lots of little inputs can all add up I suppose, probably wrongly

 

is there a national electricity grid in america?I'm guessing that most of the clever people who contribute to this forum are American

 

Google can answer that questions faster then we can.

 

yes of course, idle of me

 

on checking it seems that america does not have a national grid, but that many would like to have one, odd -most countries do but america is more a a continent than a country; it's certainly jolly big, maybe it's not practical since much electric power is lost in distribution or so I am told. Anyway it would cost a fortune, but less than wars

 

NOT STUPID, these ideas may be a bit impractical but the world has an energy crisis on it's hands and there is not going to be just ONE answer we need many different ideas.

 

Even if there are losses the added power may be sufficient to make up for the existing losses - giving an overall increase in the power available.

I'm not so sure it would "cost a fortune": a decently-sized dynamo attached to the spindle in the foundations of a roundabout in a kids' playground shouldn't cost too much.
I'd bet that the major costs would be administration

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then we'd better keep having ideas how about the movement of the earth itself, obviously we don't want to slow it down or upset any delicately balance and interconnected mechanisms. since the earth is spinning rather fast can we not take advantage of that somehow?

 

The only problem with that one is that we're moving with the Earth: we need a relative motion to make use of, so we'd have to get something into orbit.
And to make use of the Earth I suspect the whole thing would have to be massive, absolutely huge.
That one may cost more than it's worth...

 

I'm not completely certain exactly what you mean by "national" grid. What we do have is every individual distribution grid in the entire U.S. is interconnected - and with Canada also.

Power generated in California is often sold to and used in New York. Not actually directly, though - it may be used in Montanna, replaced, used in Kentucky, replaced, etc. But it eventually winds up in New York.

 

the transmission losses in a national grid can be found by googling UK national electricity grid and following the lik to wikipedia which sets out the order of the losses; its odd that there is no US national electricity grid it's a pretty common sense thing to havem a national water grid would also make sense

 

Certain systems can become self-defeating over a given size, it may be more efficient to have linked interconnected "local" grids over something the size of the US.

 

in England, the whole landscape is dotted with bloody great pylons- not very pretty. when I hitched round america I don't recall seeing that many. there is some, but not much evidence that the incidence of cancer is higher among people living right under them -personally I'd rather they went under ground for purely aesthetic reasons unless you could grown roses up them

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if there was a national grid and where there is, one can always feed into it from any source- hell we've got half a million prisoners sitting on their buts they could make my giant fly wheels turn- once a flywheel is up to speed I know from personal experience that it is really easy to make it go faster and faster, bigger the flywheel more energy it would turn out once you got it going and that could be by lots of indirectly applied human exertion if you got the gearing right- could it not? - or is that impossible?

 

Like Read said - the US system is effectively a national grid, simply because the individual grids are connected.
I have no idea why they went for "separate ones" (probably politics, but it could be scaling efficiencies).
Oh, it's definitely possible, with the right gearing: it's merely a scaled up bicycle dynamo but feeding a flywheel instead of the bike lights

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I expect a national anything- except guard- smacks of socialism but the US does not have a National Health Service yet either, probably for the same reason, we think that is weird. the NHS is, rightly, a sacred cow in England and I owe my life to it, in a manner of speaking

 

I think it would work, with lots of gears of course, so that the effect of a single person really gets the wheel to turn by the slightest amount. But I do think it would stop rather soon if left for it's own. It would have to be turning at a rate that would equal the amount of turn that the other people produce. Since the amount of turn of a single person is so miniature I don't think it would keep moving until the next person comes along, never mind making it move more by loosing less turn than the first person had provided.

The weight-lift alternative seems more viable though, but it would have to be lifted rather high in order to achieve anything for any long - perhaps if it filled a gigantic battery. But I think we gain more power by natural sources; wind, solar, etc.