People Power for Audlem

With the Community gym now boasting over 200 members, the Parish Council is investigating the possibility of harnessing some of the energy being expended in the gym.

Readers will probably be aware of the recent advances in local power storage technologies being made by Elon Musk's Tesla company.

The idea is to install a Tesla 'Power Wall' in the gym which will be connected to the cardio exercise machines, initially the upright cycle and tread mills.

Then, as gym members do their training routines, the energy expended will be converted into electricity and stored in the Power Wall.

The Power Wall allows unused energy to be fed back into the national grid – subject to a Fluctuating Operating Output Level – and would, experts calculate, be able to power all of Audlem and even leave some over for export to Buerton and Hankelow. Negotiations are already under way to agree a Local Community Thermal Exchange Rate.

Increased power output

Obviously better results will be obtained the more energy goes into the exercise, so the gym committee is proposing to replace the present modest one-man treadmill with an eight-man version (pictured above) – this will require gym members to run in teams of eight for two-hour shifts, and e-mails will shortly be sent out to members informing them of the times of their allocated shifts.

The power output of the cycling machines will also be increased through the introduction of tandem versions.

There is a fear, though, that some gym members might be put off from putting in their maximum efforts if the resulting power were distributed to everyone, so a more sophisticated version is being designed which would allow users to register their gym entry fobs via the Audlem Power Regulating Identity Loader (version 1) system so that the resulting electricity is directed specifically to their own homes.

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