Harnessing Energy from the Elliptical Machines

I worked out on the elliptical machine again and I can generate 200 watts for about 10 minutes. That's with the resistance pretty high and the incline maxed. Though I'm somewhat out of shape.

I presume a lot of people wouldn't be able to do that. Others might be able to do better, and for 20, maybe 30 minutes. But until most Americans have been forced by the secret health police to work their buns on the elliptical machine to power light bulbs and computers for a while, we can assume initially they'd be taking it easy.

So let's estimate the average person could generate 100 watts for 10 minutes. I tried it and it was fairly easy.

I did some rough mathematical calculations...

200 million people use the elliptical machine generating 100 watts for 10 minutes, generates:

20,000,000,000 watts for 10 minutes
divide by 6 =

3,333,333,333 watt-hours, or 3.3 billion watt-hours

Or 3,333 Megawatts per day...

Which is about 300,000 Megawatts over 3 months...

Compare that to the "net summer capacity" of electricity from all fuel sources (coal, petroleum, natural gas, renewable energy, hydro) in 2005 it was: 978,020 Megawatts. (Number from the U.S. Energy Information Administration)

So, if we could somehow link all these elliptical machines to the Grid, and store the energy for future use, the President could call on us all to serve our country and sweat a little to reduce our dependency on oil and coal, slow down global warming, and make everyone fit...