By Rachel Erpenbeck

In an effort to eliminate some of UK’s carbon footprint, the Johnson Center began installing new technology this semester to put power back into the building and cut utility costs.

Hudson Harr, the 23-year-old creator and CEO of Rerev located in Clearwater, Fla., has finalized the $11,000 installment on the Precor elliptical machines in the Johnson Center. When using the elliptical machines, the more resistance that is being used will help to put power back into the generators. The process will take eight to 10 years to produce results.

UK is the second university to have the technology installed. The idea first came to Ron Lee, director of the Johnson Center, when he attended the F.C.C. Campus Recreation Directors meeting in September at Louisiana State University, he said. While at the conference, directors of the facilities talk about the programs they have going on in their athletic centers.

While discussing programs, the University of Florida presented a new idea about the use of Harr’s technology used in ellipticals.  Harr, a University of Florida graduate, helped install the technology into the gym and is continuing to see out the process of each installation to make sure there are no kinks.

“Watching everyone come into the gym to workout and use all these machines, we thought there has to be a way to harness all the energy from the equipment being used,” Lee said. “When the technology Hudson (Harr) came up with was presented to us, we knew that we had to jump on the opportunity to have it here.”

Out of the machines at the Johnson Center, 14 ellipticals now have the technology installed in them. The ellipticals have a green colored sticker on them that will state that the energy is being put back into the building. The second floor of the gym has a ReCardio processor by the fitness desk to tell how many watts of energy are being put back into the building. Each retrofitted machine has a controller box that feeds into the central ReCardio processor and finally into an inverter that taps directly into the building’s electrical system.

The Johnson Center has discussed plans to have a competition in the future to see who can create the most energy to be put back into the building.