The Human Power Plant: How it Works

The Human Power Plant is a working prototype of a muscular power generator, manned by a group of people. We cooperate with makers and sports coaches to build exercise machines that are suited for different types of human power sources, are fun and social to use, and produce a maximum amount of power.

The Human Power Plant is an all-round off-the-grid solution. It can supply energy anywhere and anytime, provided that humans can be motivated to operate it. The power plant supplies energy in the form of electricity, water under pressure, and compressed air. It is built from simple and durable parts.

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These days, we have automated and motorised even the smallest physical efforts. At the same time, we go to the gym to keep in shape, generating energy that's wasted. The Human Power Plant restores the connection between physical exercise and energy use.

Hydraulic-Pneumatic System

The human power plant consists of several exercise machines, which are set up around an energy storage and regulating device. Roughly half of the exercise machines are pumping water into a pressure vessel, while the other half are pumping air into a smaller tank.

The air from the smaller vessel then compresses the water in the larger one, increasing the energy potential of the hydro-pneumatic accumulator (small + large tank). 

Image: The Human Power Plant in its second location, Deventer, the Netherlands.

Next, water under pressure is led to a Pelton wheel, which can supply mechanical energy or electricity (if coupled to a generator). The water falls from the water turbine into a receiving reservoir, from where it can be pumped into the accumulator again.

Human Powered Shower

The receiving reservoir of this closed water system is converted into a shower, where power producers can cool down and relax after their effort.

The receiving reservoir of the system, ready to be used as a shower. The Pelton turbine is above the blue plastic sheet, which has small holes to create a shower.

A Sustainable Battery

Water and air allow us to produce electricity without the use of chemical batteries and electronics -- which are not sustainable components. In our muscular power generator, the hydro-pneumatic accumulator takes over the role of the battery and the voltage regulator.

Energy storage and regulation: hydro-pneumatic accumulator.

The human power plant is built from simple and mostly scavenged parts. The machine can be maintained and repaired by a plumber. Unlike chemical batteries, the human power plant can be operated for many decades.

Exercise Machines

Exercise machines for strength training can produce a lot of power in a very short time, making them an interesting addition to stationary cycling machines for human power generation. Having the choice allows people to choose which bodily advantages they gain from their efforts.

The human power plant is a work in progress. Each time the contraption is moved to another location, we improve, adapt or replace modules.

The exercise machines described below concern the set-up in Deventer, the Netherlands, where the human power plant 1.1 was exhibited in July/August 2017.

1. Reverse Hack Squat

The Reverse Hack Squat is aimed at strength training. A person stands with curved knees below the bar and stretches his or her legs. The exercise mainly builds leg muscles and strengthens the bones and the tendons.

This exercise machine converts human power into compressed air, which is used to pressurise water.

Our legs are roughly four times stronger than our arms, and this exercise machine is our most powerful producer of compressed air. The effort that's required to lift the bar increases as the pressure vessel fills up.

2. The Cross Trainer

The Cross Trainer is the archetypal exercise machine, aimed at endurance training. The exercise strengthens the heart and the lungs.

Almost all the muscles are used, but the load on the body is the heaviest on the legs and the shoulders. The muscles of the torso are also used, especially for maintaining stability.

The arms push the levers forward and backward. This movement pumps water into the pressure vessel. The legs are moved up and down as if walking up the stairs. This movement is pumping air into the pressure vessel.

3. Biceps and Triceps Extension

This exercise machine, which produces compressed air, can be operated by four people simultaneously.

One person operates the foot pedals, which work similar to the foot pedals of the Cross Trainer that we described above. Two persons train their biceps and triceps by moving the handles on each side up and down.

A fourth person turns the wooden wheel that operates an air compressor. The manually operated air compressor is surprisingly effective.

4. Heavy Pull Drag

The Heavy Pull Drag produces a large amount of power in a short time. The machine is inspired by human drawn canal boats from earlier times. As an exercise device, it appeared in the 1990s, aimed at American football players.

To produce power, the operator puts on a harness with a cable attached to it. The cable is wound around an old car rim, which is fixed to a powerful membrane pump. 

The operator walks forward or backward while wearing the harness, keeping his/her body as low to the ground as possible. Walking forward trains the muscles in the back, walking backward trains the quadriceps in the legs, and pulling sidewards trains the muscles of the hip.

The Heavy Pull Drag is our most powerful water pump.  

Human Power Plant under re-construction in Antwerp, September 2017.

Where is the Human Power Plant?

• June 2017: Zero Footprint Campus, Utrecht, the Netherlands.
• July/August 2017: Kunstenlab, Deventer, the Netherlands.
• September 2017: Archipel, Antwerp, Belgium.
• October 2017 - January 2018: Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
• ...

Comments

[Martin Buuri Kaburia]

Awesome invention

[The Disaster Guy]

I would like some details on how much power the human power plant produces with the different input mechanisms described, and with different numbers of people participating. Could results be described in wattage, amperage, voltage produced, or in horsepower? A power plant that produces no power is just an exercise machine. Thank you!

[kris de decker]

@ The Disaster Guy

That's the next step. Until now, the challenge was to make it work.

[David]

I just came across this article not long after hearing on the radio how Irish women in sedentary computer jobs snack the equivalent of an extra 50 days'-worth of calories each year through boredom - cakes brought into work, fatty and sugary coffee drinks, soft drinks, doughnuts, muffins, crisps, biscuits etc.

I said to my wife, what's needed is a machine that will dispense these goods only after the equivalent in calories has been expended.

So what about that: you put your money in a vending machine, start pedalling (or whatever) with the energy going into a storage device or the grid and then the requested item pops out once you've worked hard enough.

I don't think it's too stupid an idea, though it may take a long time to get your Mars Bar. Maybe a machine you pedal at your desk, linked to the vending machine?

[delord]

Funny project. A bit of cosmetic, maybe to make it sexier.

So.Waste energy to built a machine to collect energy from under employed energy people... Well. Isn't a bit weird to you?
I cant help but feel that like an attempt to hide a wrong way of living.
Something filthy.

[Frederick Weihe]

Cute... but I would need to hear why this isn't just a clever distraction from the real cultural and technological issues of our time.

The whole point of industrialism is the huge energy-density of fossil carbon, and the tremendous power output of machines that use it. An ordinary kitchen mixer has the same power output--a few hundred watts--as a normal human body making a strenuous effort. A workshop air compressor or chainsaw or lawn mover is the power-equivalent of a group of olympic athletes working together. And a few hundred watts cost, currently, only pennies per hour. There is a logic within the current cultural and economic system, according to which it makes sense for people to sit and plan, and machines to do nearly all hard mechanical work. It is not about fitness or sugar drinks.

How is this large art installation (that's what it is, no?) different than telling people they could use a push-mower instead of a gas or electric one on their lawns, bike instead of drive, or that they could use an old-fashioned saw instead of an power saw, or wash their clothes by hand? There's a reason people use machines. There's a reason that things are the way they are, which this project doesn't seem to address.

Being a provocative art project is fine, by the way! Hopefully it raises awareness and makes people think.

Has anyone done an embodied carbon calculation? Do you know how long such a structure would have to be used to repay its carbon debt? Such a calculation would have to include the nutrition source, since conventional food production uses about ten units of (fossil carbon) energy per unit of nutritional energy, and the human body is not a particularly efficient converter of chemical to mechanical energy.

[JReid]

@Frederick Weihe. In one sense you are correct, but it seems you neglected the premise: "These days, we have automated and motorised even the smallest physical efforts. At the same time, we go to the gym to keep in shape, generating energy that's wasted." If people are exercising anyway, why not turn all those gym exercise machines into something that at least produces something.

The unfortunate thing about this plan in my opinion is that it doesn't appear to give people the option to increase/decrease their load - which is a requirement of gym equipment.

[Damian Pound]

Have a gearing system or CVT* to increase/decrease effort needed to perform a rep, maybe have it automatically change gear ratios between sets to accommodate pressure changes.
*Continuously Variable Transmission