Step Up: Gisele Helps Power Up New Year's in New York

It's easy to take for granted the power requirements of outdoor environmental lighting: street signals, billboards and the lights in a subway station. The energy has to come from somewhere, but in the rush of life, hardly anyone notices or thinks about it.

Stopping to think about it for a minute, New Year's Eve is a total power hog! Take, for example, Time Square in New York City. It involves lights, TV cameras, thousands more people than usual using public transportation (which is, of course, still better than driving). This year, instead of draining the grid, at least part of the Times Square celebration will be powered by sweat — some of it famous sweat!

Duracell is sponsoring a "Power Lounge" at the Charmin bathroom station for visitors to Times Square. Once you've "refreshed" yourself, you can go upstairs to the Duracell Recharge Rest Stop and charge up your phone, camera, or iPod. While you're waiting for the red light to turn green on your electronic devices, you can hop on a snow bike that has been set up with a rotary pedal system and hooked up to some batteries. As you pedal, you generate energy that is stored in batteries for use later.

And there is a very specific use planned for these batteries: to power the giant "2-0-0-9" when the ball drops at midnight. They need 200 hours of battery power, and visitors to the Power Lounge can make their contribution on one of the six snow bikes. Supermodel Gisele stopped by the Power Lounge and did a session on the snow bike to power up the energy stores. Other celebrities who have stopped by to add their sweat equity include Liza Minnelli (we'd love to see photos of that!) Katie Couric and Leona Lewis.

Even though it probably won't conserve that much energy from the grid, it's a neat idea to get people thinking about how much energy is needed for this kind of celebration, and alternative ways of generating power. If you live in New York, or you're visiting for the holidays, you can do your part to power the celebrations. The Power Lounge, 540 Broadway in Times Square between West 45th and West 46th Streets, is open between now and December 31, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday, and 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Thursday through Saturday.