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@Captain_Blight
1) If you're not pedalling hard enough (say, < 100 watts), you need to put in more money.
2) If you're pedalling just hard enough to keep up (say, 100-125 watts), you get to continue free of charge
3) If you're really working hard, say 125 watts and up, the machine starts dropping coins back out at you.
Given two dozen pedalling stations, a fairly heavy flywheel (something on the order of a couple ton) running in good bearings and turning a generator head, you could fairly reasonably expect to be able to keep the lights on most of the time. Low-voltage LEDs would be the way to go, of course.
When I build my home, sometime in the next three years, I don't want to use anything higher than 12V DC in my home. Heavens, here in the States, there's an entire industry for mobile appliances: I can buy refrigerators and microwave ovens that will run on 12V DC, and recent advances in LED technology make using them for home lighting a viable alternative. They require smaller wiring, too, reducing cost that way as well. Not to mention that the risk of an electrical fire gets vanishingly small. I'm pretty firmly committed to making all my own electricity, and so when I bought the land on which I wish to build, I was delighted to find a waterfall on it! It isn't much for flow, perhaps 25 gallons/minute, but it's over an 80-foot drop. I know I can power a turbine with that, perhaps in two stages (two 40-foot drops).
Now all I have to do is win the lottery!