Human muscle as an energy source has always been a terribly inefficient prospect. That's why we literally started moving away from it in 7000 BCE.
Gravitational potential energy will probably be our best bet for energy storage, but we will be using appropriate-tech solar and biomass and wind and hydro (probably in that order) to charge it.
Further reading:
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2017/05/could-we-run-modern-society-on-human-power-alone.html
I understand and agree with you, and conceded that biking may have been a bad example elsewhere in the thread. My point, however, has much less to do with the details of power generation than the assertion that people will do inefficient, bone-headed, and desperate things to try and keep their phones alive in the time between running out of traditional power sources and having built reliable alternatives (the "appropriate-tech solar and biomass and wind and hydro" you mention). I am not suggesting that these things are good ideas. They are silly and their suggestion was meant to be humorous, not instructive.
Not the crank ones, personally, but I have used the ones you shake like a shake weight. The generated runtime is longer than the time you have to shake them, but it's not good.
Human muscle as an energy source has always been a terribly inefficient prospect. That's why we literally started moving away from it in 7000 BCE.
Gravitational potential energy will probably be our best bet for energy storage, but we will be using appropriate-tech solar and biomass and wind and hydro (probably in that order) to charge it.
Further reading: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2017/05/could-we-run-modern-society-on-human-power-alone.html
I fucking love low-tech and no-tech magazine
I understand and agree with you, and conceded that biking may have been a bad example elsewhere in the thread. My point, however, has much less to do with the details of power generation than the assertion that people will do inefficient, bone-headed, and desperate things to try and keep their phones alive in the time between running out of traditional power sources and having built reliable alternatives (the "appropriate-tech solar and biomass and wind and hydro" you mention). I am not suggesting that these things are good ideas. They are silly and their suggestion was meant to be humorous, not instructive.
Have you ever used one of those hand-powered crank flashlights?
Not the crank ones, personally, but I have used the ones you shake like a shake weight. The generated runtime is longer than the time you have to shake them, but it's not good.
From my experience, I'm pretty sure no one uses the hand-powered ones more than once or twice before getting sick of them.