Next step, perpetual energy!

Did you feel it?
Yesterday? 6pm central?
The world changed.
Well, that might be a bit of an overstatement, but it certainly was exciting.

Let's go back a bit. The Minnesota State Fair is the best 12 days of summer. No really, it's true. The station I now work for has always had a huge presence at the fair. Morning, noon, 5, 6, and 10 all live at the fair. There is a fair reporter specifically covering the fair. They even get the viewers/fairgoers involved... The past three years each of the anchors and reporters placed their fate in the hands of the masses. A web poll decided who would end up in the dunk tank. Hilarity ensues.

This year someone had the brilliant idea to let the viewers power the newscast. That's right. Human powered news. Our crack team of engineers created a system involving bikes and batteries and it's that simple. Okay, it's not that simple, but that's all that I can figure out. Let's just say it's a great idea.

Jump to Thursday, the first day of the "Great Minnesota Get-together." At the 'CCO booth, inside the "fish bowl" you'd see eight bikes, attached with many wires to 24 batteries.



The fairgoers turned bikers can check their progress on the screens -



and can earn a wristband for 200 kilowatt hours and a t-shirt for 500. For one newscast, we need 10,000 kilowatt hours to power lights, all the cameras, a production truck, monitors, etc. Ben Tracy did a "Good Question" about the set up - check that out.



All day Thursday and Friday the fairgoers took their turn at the bikes and stored up the energy needed. And just before 6, the engineers got everything ready to go.





I wish I could say that I knew what they were doing, but I have no idea... It involved unplugging the bikes, and plugging into the UPS... I think that's what it is called.

Everyone was excited for the switch over. Honestly, if it didn't work, we really didn't have a back up plan. We had one reporter back at the station waiting at the desk... There in fact was a decent chance of the show going to black. The engineers were pretty confident until just before 5:00 when the whole set up at the fair went down and the 5 o'clock newscast was in jeopardy. And this newscast was just a normal newscast on the electric grid... no fancy batteries involved. They got it working again quickly, but it threw doubt into the following newscast.

Come 6:00 pm and the beginning of the newscast. The anchors started the show as normal and explained what was about to happen. They tossed to Dennis and Jeanette inside the fish bowl with me, to show the people the batteries and that they were fully charged.



Toss out to the electric guy in the hallway ready to flip the switch.



Now 6:05, excitement is high, electric guy flips the switch and... No problems! The first ever human powered newscast. Check out the video. I'm pretty stoked that I was there to be a part of it.



The plan is to power at least two more newscasts from the fair with human power. You can check on the bikers on the webcam and you can also see how much power is needed for the next newscast.