Friday, April 3, 2009
Working out at the Ambler Student Recreation Fitness Center will soon be about more than powering muscles.
It will also be about powering the building.
In the fall, 15 elliptical machines will be revamped with new technology that captures the energy used by students to move the machine and turns it into renewable electric power.
The technology, called ReCardio, comes from a company called ReRev in Florida. The Envision coalition worked with the Student Environmental Advisory Board to provide funding for the project. The SEAB agreed this week to fund the recreation center with $15,900 to pay for the new upgrades.
Andrew Stanley, Overland Park senior, found the ReRev company online. Stanley said he got the idea for the project when his friend, a graduate in health, sports and exercise science, mentioned starting a gym that provided its own power for the building. Stanley said the idea stuck with him and he started researching possibilities. When he found ReRev.com, he started working with the company and the director of the recreation center, Mary Chappell, to bring the technology to the University.
Stanley presented the idea to Envision presidential candidate J.J. Siler and vice presidential candidate Alex Porte for support.
“There was a lot of enthusiasm, and I knew it was something a large amount of people could get excited about,” Stanley said.
Porte, Great Falls, Va., junior, said Envision pushed for the idea for a long time, and was proud when the funding came through.
“This is something we brought to the student body and it’s important that we got it done,” Porte said. “We just happened to get it done before we were elected.”
Porte said though Envision helped make the project a reality, Stanley was the driving force behind the operation.
“We kind of put him on our shoulders and gave him our full support,” Porte said. “He’s really the one who followed it through from concept to reality.”
Stanley said he worked with engineering and architectural students to figure out blueprints of the building and gather other information ReRev would need to submit a proposal to the University.
Silvia Reshmeen, Dhaka, Bangladesh graduate student in architectural engineering, met Stanley through Engineers Without Borders, and helped him acquire the building’s blueprints.
Stanley said he thought the project would be a good way for sustainability efforts to be linked directly to the University.
“We have good ideas and everyone talks about sustainability, but I haven’t seen a lot of new things coming from it,” Stanley said. “I thought this would be a good opportunity for something to come of it. We could show we’re really committed, and not just talking about it.”
The elliptical machines will be equipped with LCD boards to show students how much energy they are putting back into the building. Stanley thought the boards would prove important in getting student attention for the project.
“Maybe they’re not traditionally thinking about energy, but they’re seeing it in front of their faces so hopefully we can spark a dialogue that way,” Stanley said.
— — Edited by Justin Leverett
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Comments
Exercise machines to power Rec Center
Good work, Envision.
Exercise machines to power Rec Center
How long will it take to repay the $15,900 cost of this program? What are the maintenance costs? How long will these devices last? For that matter, how long will the machines they are installed on last and can they be reused?
If this decision was deliberated on in a similar way to the new bus system, rest assured these questions have not been answered.
Exercise machines to power Rec Center
The 15,900 has been covered by the sustainability fee that the students pay every semester, no repaying will be necessary.
From an engineers perspective, it would seem as though these devices have a long lifespan as they merely reroute the energy directly into the breaker. Since each device is relatively cheap, I'd expect that the company would not have such widespread popularity if their devices incurred maintenance costs greater than that of purchasing the device.
Good work Envision!
Exercise machines to power Rec Center
An alternative idea: Step 1 - Build clean, safe, reliable nuclear plants. Step 2 - Get out of the Tutu-ing gym and go use that energy to do good things in your community ... plant a community garden, paint an elderly neighbor's house, etc., etc., .... do something REAL, don't just run in place to try to look good in the mirror.
Exercise machines to power Rec Center
Brilliant. Great work, Envision!
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