A long time dream of mine has been to make a pedal powered generator. I remember as a kid in the 70's seeing articles about people that did this with converted bicycles. I never got around to it, but the idea stayed with me.
Lately I set up my mountain bike on a stationary trainer stand. It does what it is supposed to do but the idea of the "wasted" energy bothers me and so I started thinking about bike generators again.
I had my own ideas but I decided to check the current state of the art and found it to be pretty good.
Here are some sites I thouht were worth linking.
Exercise bike conversion. I really like how they reused a bunch of scrap to make theirs.
http://www.angelfire.com/80s/sixmhz/bikegenerator.html
Dave Butcher's site has useful information, and sells plans for his gen bike.
http://www.los-gatos.ca.us/davidbu/pedgen/stats.html
This site is ok also, and he made a style more like what I was thinking of.
http://www.mattshaver.com/bikegen/index.htm
One thing I really want to add to the design are super capacitors, they are expensive but very cool. I have been reading about them but Dave Butcher's site shows him using a Maxwell Technologies 58 Farad 15 module. It is really interesting. Buying the components to make a module, is a little less expensive, but you don't get the neat packaging. The price for the 58 Farad Module is $185.
http://www.maxwell.com/ultracapacitors/products/modules/bmod0058-15v.asp
http://www.prestostore.com/catalog.php/tecategroup.com/dt9239/pd30235/BCAP0350_E250_Ultracapacitor
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