Can you power a house with a ShakeWeight?

Great video Dianna! Very nice way to show people how hard it is to make energy for their homes. I work in an electric utility and I can tell you our smallest generator is a 50MW gas turbine. They’re derived from 747 airplane engines and are absolutely massive and complex machines. You can imagine the torque on those generator shafts are a few orders of magnitude higher than the force you’re exerting into your shake weight solenoid haha :) and that’s our SMALLEST generator. Also they spin at 3600rpm to sync with grid frequency of 60hz; you might have a little trouble trying to sync your shakeweight to 60hz ;)

We’re rapidly adopting solar, wind, and batteries for a clean, modern smart grid though and we are 40% renewable already today locally and going to be 65% in 10 years. This is one of the biggest challenges for our generation and the problem we’ll have to solve over the next century!

Have you heard of Transatomic? They are a nuclear reactor startup, also out of your alma mater MIT! It would be amazing if you could interview them on your YT channel about what they’re trying to do and follow up this video with a discussion on the future of energy!