CORVALLIS - Oregon State University won the annual Civil War blood drive this month.

Earlier in the term, OSU bested the University of Oregon in the Pac-10 Fitness Challenge.

Now students, staff and faculty have a chance to better their rival school in another competition in advance of Thursday's high-stakes football game: the Energy Civil War.

From Monday through Thursday, Dixon Recreation Center will host the event, which is part educational outreach, part marketing campaign, according to John-Albert "Jac" Conlu, a member of Oregon State University's Student Sustainability Initiative.

OSU and UO will each monitor the electricity produced on 12 elliptical training machines on their respective campuses. OSU is focusing on energy efficiency while UO will emphasize the merits of renewable energy, Conlu said.

Dixon offers 22 elliptical machines that have been fitted with a patent-pending technology by ReRev. The company installed small generators, similar in size and function to a car alternator. The generator converts a person's motion on the machine into electricity, said Garrett Loveall, a center manager at Dixon and a senior in industrial engineering.

OSU was one of the first universities in the country to utilize this technology.

"To get the most amount of power, you have to increase the resistance," Loveall said.

On Saturday morning, Yuki Uemura's T-shirt was drenched in sweat as she set a tough pace, alone in a line of 10 elliptical machines.

Loveall pointed to the inverter on the wall that monitors the watts produced. Her output peaked at 44 watts and averaged 32 watts.

A 30-minute workout could generate 50 watt-hours, enough to run a laptop for an hour or power a light bulb for two and a half hours, Conlu said.

Across the hall in the cardio room, three people worked out on similar machines.

"She's clearly the only one on this line," Garrett said. "And she's putting out almost as much as those three people because her resistance is higher. She's really flying."

"I love running, so I keep it hard," said Uemura, who's majoring in exercise and sports science.

Uemura knew her workout was contributing to Dixon's power grid; several others did not.

Lisa Bergmann, a freshman in exercise and sports science, said she noticed the small orange sticker on the machine that reads, "This machine will turn your energy into electricity."

"I kind of like that it's going toward something else, other than just working out," she said.

"I convert my morning granola into energy," said George Hoffman, a research associate in crop and soil science, after his 20 minutes on the elliptical machine. "It's a bonus."

Such awareness is one of the goals of the program, according to Brandon Trelstad, OSU's sustainability coordinator. He wants people to understand how much human power it takes to use a 100-watt light bulb.

"If they can feel that kilowatt, it changes our relationship to power," Trelstad said. "It makes it more tangible."

There are 10 TVs in the cardio room. They draw 200 watts each, Loveall said; he notices the irony.

"We could rethink the TVs on the wall."