The Imaginarium has (21) pieces of electricity-producing exercise equipment in the ECO gym:
- (17) spin bikes
- (2) recumbent bikes
- (2) ellipticals
These units were purchased from SportsArt America, located in Mukilteo WA. SportsArt has been producing fitness equipment since 1977 and introduced their ECO-line of products in 2014.
Each piece of equipment has an individual user interface (the console), where users can track their “Human Watts” are compared to the “Grid Watts”. Human Watts is the amount of electricity a user is generating by using the equipment, where Grid Watts is the amount of electricity the equipment is returning to the grid. Grid Watts are always lower than Human Watts because the equipment itself uses electricity to operate, so the Grid Watts represent the net electricity going back into our building.
The SportsArt proprietary inverters, located on each piece of equipment underneath the base covers, are what convert electricity back into our building. We capture and monitor the performance of the ECO gym with our POWER METERS in the mechanical room. The ECO gym electricity production is also part of our Video Wall Energy Monitoring Display.
We expect the ECO gym equipment to generate approximately 3,660 kWh of electricity annually, which is about 5% of our annual demand. Although this is not a high percentage, the ECO gym equipment is a very visual and direct way visitors to the Imaginarium can contribute to our Net-Zero Energy goal.