Members would leave their electronic devices in special hardened lockers, plug them in, and then go to work out, and the power from central battery bank would then charge everything that's in the lockers.

I also had an idea for credit system where the more power you generated the cheaper your monthly bill/subscription would be for the gym (only a few bucks here and there), or some kind of perks, like a free t-shirt once a year if you generated over 1 MWh (1000 kWh) or whatever.

The power generated by such a place would probably be negligible but it would give people the same emotional high as other pro-social tasks.

[–] Five@slrpnk.net 11 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I saw a report on a gym with the idea that the exercise equipment would power the gym. It wasn't a good business model. They brought the reporter in and only turned on some of the lights - they had to be super stingy with electricity to get anywhere near net positive energy generation.

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

I've also had this same idea more than once.

I think the power output of the earlier commentor is probably for a "basic" fit person. But what about those huge bodybuilding hulks? How much is the power output when they're pulling maximums for a day?

In the best scenario, there'd actually br extra electricity to sell back to the grid, and the gym might be free for some of the "power-users".

However I think as the earlier dude points out, stable power output isn't that high and probably way more reliable to just put down solar panels, and a whole gym worth of generative weight lifting equipment would probably cost quite a lot.