Scoring free stuff at nice hotels is a rare occurence (hello, $10 bag of mini-bar peanuts!), so when a classy establishment like the Crowne Plaza pays guests to embrace green energy, we get a little bit excited. The chain’s Copenhagen hotel offers guests free meals for pedaling stationary bicycles to power generators.
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Crowne Plaza’s stationary bicycles are hooked up to generators, which provide electricity for the hotel. Guests staying there can receive a $36 meal voucher if they produce 10 watt-hours of electricity, which typically takes about 15 minutes of pedaling. iPhones attached to the bikes’ handlebars display power generation as it’s occurring. Crowne Plaza execs hope the offer will lessen the hotel’s carbon footprint and incentivize fitness for guests.
The fraction of the hotel’s energy generated by biking is probably pretty small, but the concept is quite novel. If all stationary bikes could be hooked up to generators like Crowne Plaza’s, think about how much carbon-free energy could be generated in places like gyms, hotels and college campuses.
Via Popular Science
This is awesome. I would do that to the one I have at home, no problem! Win, win, win situation!
Maybe other Crowne Plaza’s will follow suit. Wishful thinking?
Whenever the boyfriend or I hop on the bike here at home I start getting angry about all the wasted energy. At the very least the one table lamp I use at night could be powered by the energy we create. We might even be able to charge our laptops. The dream is to run the fridge. Maybe someday.
it’s a good idea, but why not go big time and put up several of these bikes outside the hotel and open it to indigents in the locality? *they* are the ones needing the meal ticket, not those hotel guests.
if this idea is replicated in several other establishments, you’d have no hungry person in the city!
– langyaw
Dubai-UAE
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