Human Power Station, BBC One 'Bang Goes the Theory'

For the Human Power Station special of BBC One's Bang Goes the Theory, made with The Open University, eighty cyclists powered a family home. Gavin was consultant to Electric Pedals and worked with Colin Tonks and Tim Siddall, who built bicycle generators to power DC installations, to design the interface between the eighty bikes and the house: live feedback telling the riders how hard to pedal, and power that was near-instantaneous rather than charged into a store. The key step was a small bank of supercapacitors on the DC side, which gave the group just enough buffer to respond while an islanded inverter supplied the house. The Register records the work twice: as adviser to the programme through Electric Pedals (2009), and as consultant to Electric Pedals (2009 to 2010).