[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)


-- 
These are my opinions.  I hate spam.







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