[time-nuts] Low power timekeeping
Hal Murray
hmurray at megapathdsl.net
Wed Sep 26 02:19:30 UTC 2012
I've seen at least one good web site out there discussing pedaling to
generate electricity for home use. Here is an example I like:
Pedal Power Generator - Electricity From Exercise
http://www.los-gatos.ca.us/davidbu/pedgen.html
But this is time nuts. Has anybody looked into low powered sources of
time/frequency? What would a time-nut do if living off-grid? (Or just being
a nut and going for low power?)
Ballpark for a bicycle is 100 watts. If you do that for an hour a day, you
get 4 watts averaged over 24 hours. You could double that by working harder
or longer, but 10x gets tough.
If I did the math right, tvb's numbers say a TBolt takes 3.25 watts (after
warmup)
http://www.leapsecond.com/pages/tbolt/power.htm
That doesn't leave much leftover for lights and such.
How good a clock could you get at much lower power? I guess I'm looking for something (logarithmically) between a watch and a GPSDO.
Solar is another possibility. I think that just turns into how much space you have and/or how much you are willing to spend for solar panels. (and where you live)
--
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