(6 September 2011, 01:37)grumpy old man Wrote: dynamo and a pedal bike and have loads of kids pedaling <snip> guess i'am cluching at staws now?
No, human power is a very viable means of generating electricity that I want to look at sometime. It's suitable for powering something like a radio transmitter (brief periods of ~100W required), unfortunately it really needs two people (one to pedal and one to use the equipment).
The big concern is that in a 'more primitive lifestyle' we're all probably going to be exhausted from a hard days labor every day, too much so to want to add pedelling to generate power into our day.