How Many Corndogs Does it Take to Power a TV Broadcast

In an exciting experiment concerning energy content of fried food, a Minnesota television station, WCCO, is going to attempt to power several television broadcasts from the Minnesota State Fiar with fair go-ers on bicycles. Not only will they save on generator fuel, but I imagine it's getting them some good press as well.

The fair starts in about a week, and the WCCO team will be setting up their normal news coverage except that they will have a "power core" consisting of several electricity-generating bicycles. They're going to try to use these bikes to power the entire set up while they broadcast fair news live.

So why would we even try something this wacky? Because we wanted to see if it could be done. We wanted to see how much power we use for a newscast at the fair â€¦ or maybe it was just because we wanted to know how many corn dog calories it took to create a watt of energy.

Regardless of the reason (or our potential for failure), it's just more fun this way. The power of the unknown is just so electric â€¦ OK -- we'll stop now. Enjoy the ride and the corndogs! Oh and thanks for the watts!

The fair is twelve days long, and WCCO will be attempting to power three broadcasts with the bikes. I have no idea how much power a news van uses, so I can't give odds on whether they'll be successful. But I will say that the maximum power output of a typical fair goer is likely to be around 300 watts. Enough to power a personal computer and monitor. Without batteries for storing the power, it's not gonna be easy.

Way to go WCCO.

See Also:
-Muscle Power to Electric Power-
-Sun Wind Strength Bike-
-Power Output of Healthier Americans-

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300 watts?????
written by rob, August 17, 2007

300 watts could be rather optimistic, I saw an item on the news a few months ago, a chap had a generator powering a 60 watt bulb and he could hardly keep that lit, after a few minutes he was exhausted.
So I hope they have a large and willing supply of keen cyclists.

...
written by jack, August 17, 2007

I saw (ok..heard) the same thing on The Naked Scientists Kitchen Science segment. I don't think they'll manage much.

Efficiency
written by Hank, August 17, 2007

You can definitely get 300 watts out of an efficient generator. Of course, that would be a fairly expensive machine. But I've seen home made designs where people can keep a PC up and running without going all-out.