alternative energy

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Re: alternative energy

Postby matt walker » Thu Jan 12, 2012 10:45 pm

Oh hey, speaking of wind power, have you guys seen the windbelt generators? Like a ribbon microphone, I think. Pretty cool.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windbelt
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Re: alternative energy

Postby pa_friendly_guy » Fri Jan 13, 2012 3:45 am

I have never seen the wind belt befor. That looks like a great idea. Eliminating moving parts does increase cost effectivness alot. It sounds like very low out put so far, but they seem to be working on bigger units. The basic idea is very simple and has been used in many applications. I have a flashlight that you shake back and forth that works on the same principal.
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Re: alternative energy

Postby dave brenneman » Wed Jan 25, 2012 9:07 pm

I've seen a ton of micro hydro projects on youtube, all kinds of different ideas, from a waterwheel pump to tiny turbines. Seems like a great source of energy for partly-cloudy climates, like the pac NW and here.
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Re: alternative energy

Postby pa_friendly_guy » Thu Feb 09, 2012 3:13 pm

I have looked into micro hydro power as well, but I do not have enough flow to make much electric. From what I have read the water turbin is much more efficent than a water wheel. If you have to try and gear up the speed of the turbin to operate an alternator don't try to gear it up more than twice. You loose too much force. Many alternators need 1000rpm to turn them on. Some older car generators can make electric at maybe 800 rpm. Putting a large pully wheel on the turbin going to a small pulley can increase the rpm greatly. If you need even more rpm's the small pully can be mounted on a shaft with another large pulley on the other end and run that to a small pulley on your generator. A fly wheel on the shaft of the 2nd pulley can help keep things going once you build up some speed. My spring at the pond is a low vol flow, but I can get a good bit of fall. Not as much as you Matt, but maybe 30' to 40' fall. You have about 1lb of water preasure for every 2.3 ft of fall. So your 100 ft of fall will give you a pretty good preasure Matt. Ten Gal per min is enough in a small pipe to give you some force. I would not go over a 1" pipe, maybe even a 1/2" pipe would work. I am not an engineer so you should have someone check the flow rates of the various size pipes. For charging batteries and running lights etc in the barn I think you have plenty of water flow and plenty of fall to make that work. How far from the barn would the generator be Matt? You do have to worry about voltage drop with the DC generator system. Voltage regulator can help with that. I am sure you know more about such things than I do, I mentioned that for the groups benifit.
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Re: alternative energy

Postby Oddmar » Mon May 28, 2012 12:32 am

These people have detailed plans on thier site that show how to build 10' and bigger wind generators. They have gotten away from car alternators and now build thier own low-speed permament-magnet alternators. If you were to build one of these alternators i bet it would work well for water power as well. The wind generator build is very well documented. I've known about the site for some time and had intended to build one soon but then i started pricing components and the magnets are fairly expensive. I found an overseas supplier who has them for $8.60 each...it takes 24 to build an alternator. Otherpower has them on thier website for $11.00 each. http://www.otherpower.com/turbineplans.shtml The price of the parts won't keep me from building a windgen, just push the job back til i get settled in Arkansas. Reason is, when the wind blows, it generates a ton more electricity than PV solar.

This guy http://www.redrok.com has a fairly inexpensive PV panel solar tracker for sale. I'm not good enough with a soldering iron to bother building the cheap kit, i'll just buy the assembled unit for $94.00. It takes a bit of fabrication to build tilt-able panels with (probably) windshield-wiper motors or old sattelite dish linear actuators to move the panels...but keeping your panels flat to the sun maximizes thier energy-gathering, giving you alot more power into the battery bank. Dual axis (winter declination), home position so it moves the panel(s) to face east after the sun sets. The guy is an electrical engineer but definately not a webpage designer...the page is SUPER long and might take awhile to fully load. Just to half-load the page with my older 933mhz 256MB ram laptop so i could post this...LEDDRMPP24Vc3Pack Standard Dual Axis Solar Tracker, http://www.redrok.com/led3xassm.htm took 10 minutes of locked-up computer time. But he has the only DIY solar tracker i know of that works.

DIY solar cells (36+4extra) for $40.00 so you can build your own 70watt panels. (I've lost the link, i've got thousands of links in Firefox, I searched and found this, it looks like the same product). There is a Youtube video showing the process. http://www.ebay.com/itm/40pcs-3x6Solar- ... 4ab7862a67

Searching the internet i found the original seller's website. Looks like a better grade of solar cells. http://www.quadmodsusa.com/Pro26Tech/solarcells.html
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Re: alternative energy

Postby pa_friendly_guy » Fri Sep 21, 2012 12:52 pm

One of our members has been interested in Bio-Gas and Syn-Gas. Syn-Gas is basically methane gas produced by animal poop or rotting garbage. If that methane can be captured and used as fuel you turn a major negative greenhouse gas into a positive. Our local land fill here is catching the methane produced at the land fill and using it to boil the polluted waters that leak out if the land fill. Methane and leachate are the 2 major problems that Land fills have. They are using their one big negative to solve their 2nd major negative. Win, Win. You can also make Bio-Char for the garden and run your car on the left over gasses in the smoke. So instead of adding to pollution you get a free ride.The tech has been around for a long time and was used during WWll them gasoline was in short supply. Here is some information about how it works.

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/01/ ... -cars.html

Here are some pictures of Wood Gas Cars.

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=woo ... &FORM=IGRE

I love the idea of useing a renewable resourse like trees to run our cars. Unfortunately there is no such thing as a Free Lunch. In WWll much of France was deforested because of the use of wood burning cars. If every car was converted to burning wood we would not have any forests in a very short time. Wood gas does not have the same power as gasoline, and the range of your car is much shorter using wood gas. So it is not the final answer to all of our problems with oil dependancy. The therory does work however, and it is one alternative we have to fossel fuels. Burning wood is cabon nutral, because you are simply letting the CO2 out that the tree has been sucking in for years. At least that is what some people think. In my opinion burning is burning, and CO2 is CO2, so I do not think it is totally nutral as far as Global Warning is concerned. But I do agree that it does not add alot of new CO2.
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Re: alternative energy

Postby pa_friendly_guy » Mon Nov 05, 2012 5:22 pm

There are alot of very small camp stoves that use the syn-gas idea for cooking. Here is a Guy who wants to make syn gas, bio crude oil from his wood stove. He wants to heat his house and hot water with the wood stove, and then run a generator with the syn-gas to make his own electricity. The system has ALOT of HUGE inefficencys in it but he has wood on his own land, he does not have an oil well. Being able to get what you need from what you have does have alot of good points . I know this is NOT the best way to generate electricity, it is NOT the cheapest way to make it, it is NOT the most efficent way to make electricity. Having said all of that, being able to turn the wood laying on your own forests floor into electricity to run your homestead does have some major appeal if you want to actually live off the land, but still enjoy a small bit of our worldly pleasures, or use power tools, or use your computer to gain this kind of knowledge, lol. :lol: . Here are several videos showing what this guy is doing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKjEgHv5 ... creen&NR=1

Here is another one showing him actually running a large generator with the syn-gas he is producing. He still has some work to do in getting things right, but you can see that it actually does work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i3-w6MZP1U

Here it is again with a few adjustments. This shows the generator under load. Pretty cool I thought.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeOVq4Bu ... ure=relmfu
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Re: alternative energy

Postby pa_friendly_guy » Mon Nov 05, 2012 6:19 pm

The small woodgas stoves for camping seem to work well, they are light weight and they give a hot concentrated flaim right to your pot or pan. There are many different designs but they all seem to be very similar in wow they are made. Here is one design.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMfbt2bQ ... creen&NR=1

Here is another demonstration. There are a bunch of these on the net, just look for wood gas camp stoves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Dc9w7Fz ... re=related
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