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Podcast - Ron Lee, Director of Campus Recreation, University of Kentucky

May 1 2009
Submitted by Niles Barnes on May 1, 2009 - 11:41am

Why can't we harness the energy of dozens of people working out on aerobics machines and use it? Some innovative new technology is allowing the opportunity to do just that. At campuses such as the University of Florida, the University of Oregon and the University of Kentucky, on campus exercise facilities are experimenting with this emerging technology.

I had the opportunity to interview Ron Lee, the Director of Campus Recreation at the University of Kentucky which has recently retrofitted 14 elliptical machines with this new ReRev technology. Below is a podcast interview with Ron along with a written transcript of the interview (special thanks to Cara Meyer for all the assistance). The first photograph is of the inverter box where the energy created from the aerobics machines gets sent, the second is an example of signage used on each of the machines distinguishing them from the others.  

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To start things off, how long have you been in your position at the University of Kentucky?
I’ve been the Director of Campus Recreation for the last 4 years and I’ve been working at the University since 1982. So, I’ve been here a few years.SIgnage at the University of Kentucky
 
Tell me about these new ReRev machines, what I’ve also heard called the “green machines”.
Sure, that’s kind of what we’ve labeled them upstairs to give them their own identity and to identify the machines that we have this set up on.

Basically, the way they work is, we’ve got 14 Precor Elliptical; that’s the company  that ReRev has worked with to hook their inverter to. Part of the reason is, the elliptical trainers don’t use any electricity, and they’re self generated: you hop on and start pedaling, the panel boards light up and so it’s producing its own power. Now, they also have a generator in there, obviously, to do this, – it’s almost an oversized generator. The older ones are almost better because they have an oversized generator which lifts the rails up on it. You don’t use the rails that much, so there’s an opportunity to gain a lot of energy.
What it does is it takes that power, puts it into an inverter box that generates electricity, and it goes back into our building. So we’re using that electricity as opposed to pulling in new electricity, so it actually lowers the cost of our electric bill per month. So, it’s a pretty neat concept.

The other value of it that we’re going to see this summer is, with this hooked up to it, the capacitors that are in the Precor Ellipticals, without this pulling off of that energy, heat up and produce about 130-140 degrees, so it raises the room temperature, which you obviously have to keep it cool with working out, so that increases our cost for air conditioning. So this will also help lower that. Now, there won’t be a way to quantify that amount easily, but it’s also another additional side benefit from it.
So, we’re really thrilled by all this.
 
That’s really neat. So, not only is it creating electricity as the students are working out, but it’s also helping reduce the amount of air conditioning needed to keep the building cool.
Right.
 
How did you first learn about this technology?
I was at a summit meeting of all the Southeastern Conference Campus Recreation Directors and the Director at the University of Florida (We were actually at dinner, it wasn’t even at a meeting) and I were at a dinner break. We were talking about different things and they said they had this system down there. They had a recent graduate, Hudson, who invented this. He’s 23 years old.

They were talking about this and I was excited right away because during the afternoon, from 5-9 o’clock, every machine up there is being used. We’d walk around up there thinking, “There’s got to be a way to harness this, because it’s just wasted energy”. You think of windmills and watermills and everything: just having something turning something and creating electricity, well, you know, look at what we got here! So I was really excited when I heard about this.

We looked into it and I contacted Hudson and they gave us a demonstration. They hooked up a Precor to a lamp and had a bulb in it. Also, it actually showed the difference between the energy efficient light bulb and the regular light bulbs, they put in a regular light bulb and had you working the Precor. They would turn it on and you could feel how much more resistance you had to light up that light bulb. And then they used an energy efficient light bulb and did the same thing, and the resistance wasn’t near as much light up with that, but it showed you how it was producing the electricity to run that.
I really was fascinated by this and where this is leading.
 
That’s really neat. Now, the machines are obviously a great visual, but how much energy is really be created? Does it make economic sense? Is there a payback period for this technology?
There is. When we were talking with ReRev and Hudson they were estimating 8-10 years to pay back.

We’ve got to educate our users on the machines because they’re not producing the electricity that they could and it may be by the nature of (of these particular machines). The Precor Elliptical have a little shorter stride and we have a lot of females that use them and they get on them and use them without a lot of resistance. The more resistance, the more electricity you’re creating. 

We are going to do a campaign in educating our students on, if you really want to help out with electricity, you need to put some resistance on the machine. And, actually, it’s a far better work out for them. It’s great that people come over here to exercise, but really if they’re going it with little resistance, they aren’t getting near the health impact that they are by putting more resistance on, so I think we can get it up to where we meet that 8-10 year.
We know it will eventually pay for itself and the benefits of the - like you said, the visual and the students identifying with this and putting them in tune with sustainability issues and everything is almost worth it in itself, but it will pay for itself. And we pay our own bills here, we pay our electric bill here so to me that was even doubly  important– and it’s not like the university picks up the tab – our department pays for that electric bill each month so if we can lower it some, it’s all the better too.
 
Green Machine at U of KWhat has been the students’ reaction so far?
It’s been overwhelmingly favorable. The first week or so we had it hooked up – I was upstairs, I always go upstairs and kind of look and check on it, particularly when we first got it going. There was a female student and she was on her cell phone and I heard her on the phone and she said, “This is so cool!” and actually read the card to whoever she was on the phone with. So it’s been really popular with the students. The student newspaper has run an editorial backing this sort of effort and thought it was a great thing.
 
What suggestions would you have for other campuses that may be considering using similar technology? Any lessons you’ve learned so far with it?
 When they first hooked ours up – the inverter comes from Germany, I think, or a different country and it’s a little bit different than the original one they put in at the University of Florida. So, after they had it hooked up they did have to come back and adjust the software because we had some kinks in it.

I think Hudson and ReRev, now that they’re aware that those things are in there, they’re testing them before they ship them out. But, it’s really almost is too good to be true. Because, once we got through that issue, there’s been no problem with them. There’s no maintenance, you know, they produce their own electricity, so if we go up there and there’s no one on, you know, it’s off. The machine is off; someone has to be on one of the Precors to even turn the inverter on.

So, there really isn’t a downside other than probably the upfront cost. You know, ours cost $11,000, so it is expensive to start up with, but we will eventually get that back. And obviously as utility costs go up, that time may even shorten that, to pay for itself.
It’s been well worth it. We bought a larger inverter so that we can add to it later at a cheaper cost. Currently Precor is the only company they have it worked out with to do it so it doesn’t void your warranty or anything on the machines, but I understand they are also in negotiations with other fitness companies that will do it. I imagine - I’m excited about this because I actually think this is just the tip of the iceberg and I think what we’re going to see with cardio equipment down the line is, it’s going to be built in and you just plug it in and it will plug into your inverter and you go. And I think these companies are going to jump on this because it is such a hot issue and they can’t go wrong. We’ve yet to see a negative side to it.
 

 

 

 

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Podcast with Ron Lee Director of Campus Recreation at University of Kentucky on Green Exercise Machines