Can I Use Wind To Power A Car Alternator?
December 18th, 2009 | by Michael |
Andi asked:
Okay i was thinking about losing power in a storm (we had a pretty nasty one a few days ago) And i thought about hooking a car alternator to a wind turbine to charge a battery-bank to power lights in my house. Is this stupid? If not what you be the dimensions needed to power a few lights?
GRAHAM
Okay i was thinking about losing power in a storm (we had a pretty nasty one a few days ago) And i thought about hooking a car alternator to a wind turbine to charge a battery-bank to power lights in my house. Is this stupid? If not what you be the dimensions needed to power a few lights?
GRAHAM
3 Responses to “Can I Use Wind To Power A Car Alternator?”
By Brian K² on Dec 19, 2009 | Reply
By the time you buy all the stuff you need including a tower, batteries, inverter, etc…. you could buy a brand new gas powered generator and some fuel.
By guru on Dec 22, 2009 | Reply
OUUFFFF
This is a major project.
Of course it is doable and you would learn a great deal from doing-it
But going to school is faster; at school you will not learn as much as if you proceed with your project.
The wind is not steady, if you want the lights to be steady you need a regulator and this is where it is complex!
You need to understand about impedance, about power factor, about entropy…
The alternator needs to spin at 5000 to 10 000 RPM, the turbine wont.
You won’t easyli find the gears at your local auto parts store…
Of course making pollution as Brian suggests it is far simpler and cheaper, what you are asking is dead center at the root of going green.
I strongly encourage you to peruse. To get civilization to what it is today was no simple thing.
If you have any means of doing this, what you will learn is priceless!
You will find more here.;_ylv=3?qid=20090717152520AAwhMmS&show=7#profile-info-ZPpUObfAaa
Hope this properly answers your question
Guru
By adiabaticfire on Dec 24, 2009 | Reply
that can work but would be a lot of labor. remember you will need a battery or something to excite the rotor when starting it from stopped also.(with a partly charged batt this no prob) you will want to regulate the output like it would be in a car so as to not overcharge the batt and ill bet the regulator thats already there will work if you do it right but the matter of setting it all up remains. an alt is fairly efficient though at turning kinetic power into electric power. good luck if you try it.