What do you think is the best mechanism to generate power using a bicycle? Is it using a dynamo fixed to the wheel or using a flywheel through a chain drive?
They are the same in the end. The real issue is what speed to run the generator the most efficiently.
For any period of time a typical person can put our about 150W, with a conditioned athlete much higher.
The range goes from about 1.5-6.5 W/kg of body weight for long term power output. (for 5 min I would expect a pro rider to put out 7-7.5 W/kg, and for a 5-10sec sprint (think track) they will hit 23-24W/kg)
A flywheel is nice because it smooths out the ride, and still having gears in nice because it lets you match peddle rate to the load.
I would make a fake wheel, built on a bike hub (bearings and gears) that is the rotor of the generator. At least then you eliminate the issue of tire on roller.
A little bit late in this development Bicycles already have small dc generators hooked up the front fork of bicycles. These generators are spring loaded and when released from their locking mechanism will flip and contact the front wheel to light up the front and rear lights.
Yeah, I had one of those 'dynamos' on my Schwinn for a while.
Driven by the tire tread through a small knurled wheel, with crappy bronze bearings, maybe 20x faster than the wheel.
Driving ~10W of incandescent bulbs fast enough to see by, got old real fast.
Nowadays, LED bulbs and primary batteries make more sense for bicycling.
For power generation, human powered dynamos don't really make sense either.
The more modern replacement for the little flip-down generator is the hub-mounted generator, works quite well. I've got one on my randonneuring bikes. They do use LCD high-efficiency lights.
But, I suspect the original poster is wanting more than 3 watts, but there's really not enough information to answer the question. Perhaps the best arrangement if you need the bicycle to also be rideable when you're not using it would to connect the generator to a roller under the wheel, similar to the setup used for trainers on bicycle:
This reminds me of the guy that attached a car alternator to his bicycle so he could pedal real hard and charge up a car battery that he then mounted onto his bicycle to drive a small motor on his rear wheel so he could ride without having to pedal.
Bernie Sanders has a position paper, developed by the Women's Voter League, which clearly states that the average 12 year old can generate all the electrical power needed by 12 houses using a simple bicycle-type generator ....
They don't understand why that there is all this fuss about wind-power, solar panels and coal fired power plants .....
They are also looking for a few engineers to "straighten out" some remaining details .....
Think to yourself, would you really want a heavy rotating flywheel mounted on your bike? Imagine the difficulty this will cause with turning due to the gyroscopic forces.
Make the flywheel free spinning and you could stop the bike without putting your feet down. And make both wheels steer so you could crab-track in the direction you wanted to go instead of turning.
