While this week’s Civil War football game between the University and Oregon State University is all about roses, students are also competing to see which school can claim a green title.
Running from Monday through Thursday, the student recreation centers at both schools are holding a contest to see which can generate more student-powered electricity using specially equipped elliptical machines. The machines, designed by a company called ReRev, convert student foot power into electricity and sends the electricity directly into the power grid of the buildings.
As of press time, OSU is slightly leading the University. The contest, sponsored by the Office of Sustainability, the UO Sustainable Business Group and the OSU Student Sustainability Initiative, has no reward other than bragging rights. Students can see the daily results of the energy drive in the main lobby of the Student Recreation Center.
The elliptical machines were installed in May for $14,000, paid for through student fees and a grant from the Eugene Water & Electric Board. Director of Physical Education and Recreation Dennis Munroe said the SRC was overjoyed with the machines.
“This is one of those things that we’ve all wished for years,”
Munroe said. “You walk into the Rec Center and see all those human gerbils, and you think, ‘There’s got to be a way to harness all that energy.’”
The problem, Munroe said, was converting the energy. To be used for building power, the machines must convert kinetic energy into direct current electricity, and then into alternating current electricity.  To do this, the ReRev machines are daisy-chained together and send their power to an inverter box, which converts it from DC to AC power.
“We have 14 elliptical machines, and each one is contributing to the Rec Center’s electricity meter turning a bit slower,” Munroe said. “It’s feeding right into the electric grid of the building.”
Bryan Haunert, the associate director of facilities for physical education and recreation, said the machines generate about 400 to 500 watt hours of energy when they’re all in use.
An average 30-minute workout produces 50 watt hours of electricity, enough to power a laptop for about 30 minutes.
Although it pains SRC staff to say it, OSU was the first to install the machines.
“Oregon State ­— I hate to admit — learned about it first, and we learned about it from their experience,” Munroe said.
Haunert said a group of about a dozen students and professional staff travelled up to Corvallis to see the machines and instantly “knew we wanted to do it, too.”
Haunert said the SRC student advisory board and the Office of Sustainability were enthusiastic about the plan. However, Haunert said the idea was always about getting students in a sustainable state of mind.
“One of the biggest myths is that we did this to save money,” Haunert said.  But “we did it for educational purposes.”
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