New Year’s Eve Ball In New York (Times Square) To Be Partially Powered By Bikes

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The power of bicycling has been used before. Stationary bikes have been used to create electricity for hotels, they’ve been used in prisons to create electricity for nearby cities, they’ve been used to power bloggers, and they’ve been used to power many other things. This year, electricity generated from bicyclists will also be used to help power the New York City New Year’s Eve ball.

citi bike
Image by Ben Fried via Streetsblog

In particular, stationary Citi Bike® bicycles will be used, helping to highlight the popular bike-sharing program launched in NYC this year, the largest bike-sharing program in the US. Launched on May 27, Citi Bike users have already ridden the equivalent of 450 times around the globe. Holy cow, right?!

“Citi Bikes have energized New York City, transforming it into a far greener place while making New Yorkers more healthy,” said Times Square Alliance President Tim Tompkins. “Now New Yorkers can do themselves and the world a service by energizing the New Year’s Eve Ball, making the world’s most famous celebration greener and better!”

The bicycling has already been done, actually. Here are some details from a press release published a few days ago:

From December 28th to 30th, a Citi Bike Pedal Power Station at 7th Avenue and 42nd Street will feature six Citi Bike bicycles that people will be invited to ride to generate kinetic energy that will be collected and stored in batteries. That energy will be transferred to the New York City power grid to offset the energy needed to light the New Year’s Eve Ball.

The six bikes at the Citi Bike Pedal Power Station will be connected to 12-volt deep cycle batteries. Each bike is expected to generate an average of 75 watts per hour. The Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball is lit by more than 30,000 LEDs. Throughout the three-day event, a power meter at the Citi Bike Pedal Power Station will show how much energy has been generated.

Pretty cool. Wish I could have been there and helped to power this year’s New Year’s Eve ball. 😀

Check out all our bike stories on our bicycling channel, and subscribe to our cleantech newsletter if you are really into this stuff.

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  4. New “Wireless” Electric Bicycle Can Charge Your iPhone
  5. Bike-Sharing Programs Improve Street Life
  6. Dancing Rabbit Blogathon Wrap Up
  7. NYC Bike Share Launches — Thoughts From NYC & The Interwebs

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Zachary Shahan

Zach is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director, chief editor, and CEO. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao. Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA], NIO [NIO], Xpeng [XPEV], Ford [F], ChargePoint [CHPT], Amazon [AMZN], Piedmont Lithium [PLL], Lithium Americas [LAC], Albemarle Corporation [ALB], Nouveau Monde Graphite [NMGRF], Talon Metals [TLOFF], Arclight Clean Transition Corp [ACTC], and Starbucks [SBUX]. But he does not offer (explicitly or implicitly) investment advice of any sort.

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