Colin Tonks, the founder of Electric Pedals, was crouched on the bathroom floor of his apartment in London retiling his bathroom when we reached him on the phone. When we asked if it would be more suitable later, he said that he is always busy with something, and it is no problem to do the interview in the bathroom. After all, he had promised his wife that he would be done before she returned from her trip. Immediately we realized that Colin is someone, who is always up for a challenge.

Could you, for a start, introduce yourself, your company and what you‘re doing?

My name is Colin Tonks and I‘m currently tiling. I have a business called Electric Pedals that I‘ve been running for about ten years. We specialise in human powered events and offer a variety of interactive installations with a focus on energy awareness, education, exercise, and community. I started it as a way of communicating science, it was about the interaction between someone cycling and something happening. Before that I was an economist working for Shell. I really sold out, but it was useful to understand the power process from start to finish. That was my previous life before I decided to do something for myself. I never really had a plan with this business, it has been completely consumer driven, driven by projects. And encompassing all of that was electronics and programming. Now it has become like a crazy web, which started with one small concept and then just branched out: art, schools, cinema, music, permanent pieces, temporary installations. It has grown purely by being open to ideas. The concepts are all driven by themselves and I just feel like I‘m a bit of a passenger in it.

Tell us a little bit more about your systems, how do they work?

CT: The key thing about my systems, and that is really the most important thing for me and a very strong principle: not to use batteries. A battery has an embodied amount of energy built into it. So, if you‘re cycling, some of your energy is going into the battery and then that energy is flowing into something else, it‘s just completely detached. The battery detaches the people from what they‘re powering. And from the very first project I did, I always used capacitors. They work like an air balloon, if you blow in some air into them that becomes your storage. But they can quickly let air out as much as they can quickly let air in. And that acts as a balance for the whole system. But it‘s only a tiny amount of energy. When you arrive at an event, they´re flat. And when you leave, they´re flat. It makes it very real, and it also shocks people when I tell them there is no backup.

Do you see any potential in human powered energy generation?

CT:  A little bit. It all depends on consumption. The issue is that humans don‘t really generate a lot of energy. We‘re not very efficient, a lot of our energy goes with heat, not volume. The chemistry doesn‘t really work. To put that into context: if I‘m cycling, I can sustain maybe 60 watts, which is a to reduce. Also, I don‘t think that technology will come through that will allow us to be more efficient in terms of generating, but certainly the efficiency of what we are powering is going to improve. I mean LEDs didn‘t exist years ago, and they‘ve changed the landscape hugely. There‘s technology all the time that‘s coming into effect that reduces the amount of power that we use.

In 2009, you were part of a special event showing how much electricity we use without even thinking about it by attempting to power a house for a day with human pedal power. Can you tell us more about that project?

CT: That was a crazy project!  It was for a science show called “Bang Goes the Theory”, a very popular TV show in the UK. That project kickstarted the business, prior to that I had only powered a Christmas tree. It was also my introduction to capacitors, because using batteries would have felt like cheating. At the time we were using a friction-based system, we connected 80 bikes and powered a home for a family of four. They wanted it to fail, but it was so well balanced that it never did, even though they engineered it into the show. Today, with a more efficient system, we could even drop a third of the people. That TV show was ground-breaking for communicating how much it takes to power our world. We‘ve got no way of knowing.

How many events are you doing approximately in a year?

CT: Around 100 events a year: 40 cinemas, 10 to 15 head-to-head challenges, some permanent projects, 10 to 15 music stages. I don’t stop. Recently I did a gig with Coldplay. Do you know Coldplay?

Yes, of course!

CT: Well, they are not my cup of tea (laughs). But it was a great experience. I powered one of their gigs for climate change.

We think that in the long term, you can only change awareness sustainably if the topic is also present visually in public space. What could be done to communicate energy consumption in public space, but in a larger scale?

CT: I think the trick is firstly, whenever we are building something to keep it interesting and engaging for people. You want to design something that builds, that includes this exponential increase in experience. It is tricky to do that and I think the easiest way to do it is with an art installation. A good example of that: I‘ve worked on Lumiere, which is a light festival in in the UK, and we had this project called “The Rose”. This giant 10 meter rose window made up of plastic bottles was installed for a while in a highly frequented public space in Central London. When people cycled first the middle lit up, then the next section, then the next one and so on. It became this progressive thing that only worked if people got involved. This is going to sound cheesy, but it empowered people to work together.

What are your hopes regarding the future of energy consumption and the role of energy in our society?

CT: I have four children, so I look at it as a father. I wish for a world where our dependency on stock, on things, on energy is reduced that we start to think a lot more about our energy profile, the way we travel, the way we eat, the way we consume. I think we‘ve certainly woken up the last few years to what‘s going on. It’s one of the first discussions now, whereas before it used to be one of the last. I am optimistic about the future; I think you must communicate that optimism now. And I think optimism is what makes ideas right.