Private Power Plant

Not only hospitals, computing facilities or roller coasters depend on electrical power to be available at all times. Think about a power loss at home, at an important point in time, e.g. when your favourite soap begins on TV. Or when reading this blog. Disturbing thought, isn’t it?

Well, I admit, the latter is probably not the best example, because you might argue that reading this blog is at least as disturbing as a power outage. Let’s stick to TV, then, O.K.?

Fine, so you can’t watch your stupid TV show and don’t want to get in such a bad situation anymore? If we leave out such remote possibilities like your’re on CATV and the headend being without power as well, it’s pretty easy: Buy a diesel generator. It would be useful to buy some diesel as well. And being able to read might have some advantage, because the manual of the thing will probably explain why it is not a good idea to set it up inside your living room next to your TV set. If you believe that the reason would be that it is too loud, you’ve found a reason, but not the reason…

However, ecological correctness commands to evaluate the possibility to use a a solution which causes less pollution: Hamsters.

The natural environment for these pets is the hamster wheel. Just combine it with an alternator and some other small gadgets you can get for just a few bucks and you got the basis. Google will find a more detailed description on power generation with a hamster wheel for you. Now, assuming you get about 100 mA, this would mean that you would only need a couple of them to keep your TV running. Further, assuming that a hamster is only a reborn human (if this works within the parameters of your belief system, that is) you can organize them in eight hour shifts without getting serious protests from some pet union. In case you want to grant them a day off per week, you might consider additional hamster staff. There should be no need to consider vacation, because they can take it when regular power from the outside is available again. This might be different for regions, where the availability of power supply through the electricity network is more often unavailable than working. In other words, you’ll need more hamsters if you are living in California.

Depending on the amount of spare space you have available in your house to store rodent food, water and, er, hamsters, you might expand the power production during a blackout to keep your beer cool and even the air condition working. Since hamster power is still not a very common technology, you might want to extensively test your hamster power plant during times, when regular power is available, so you don’t take unnecessary risks to possibly miss your soap.

In case your construction should be successful, I’d be grateful to get a detailed plan. If it doesn’t work, don’t blame me. You probably made some mistake…

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~ by tangledmind on March 6, 2007.