DIY vawt with car alternator

[Franken751]

Its a good idea but you do need to spin your alternator at a faster rpm. Pulleys are a good idea but the best is just using two gears at a 60:1 gear ratio. One gear would have 360 teeth on it and the other would have 6. This will spin your alternator at 1800 rpms and your turbine would only have to spin at 30 rpms. This means your turbine will only have to make 1 revolution every 2 second which is a speed of 7.15 mph which is easy to get. Im using this same idea to charge my electric car.

[WulfBand]

Yes the older alternator take more RPM but all you have to do is configure more pulleys as step up pulleys. You know large to small and that small connected to a large on the same rod going to another small, etc.

[Ozlakota]

then get ya self an old generator

field exciter acts as a break because it has to spin at certain revolution's to open the circuit

[Maxime124]

@Ozlakota

Indeed, we noticed that after we tried with the car generator. An old generator was to expensive at that time.

[Ozlakota]

@Ozlakota yep that's right just an old style generator t hey produce power from zero an alternator needs power to feild excite

[ssj4goko4]

yea you guys watched to much of the colony there. using a wind turbine and a car alternator will never work because when theirs no wind it will only drain your battery's. also when they go under load they become hard to turn and this increases as there rpm drops it will bring the turbine to a halt as turbines rpm do not stay the same. now you can use a lawnmower and other small engions to turn them just fine with some mods.

[NotWatching666999]

What about an inverter generator?? All magnets

[Inflec]

Biggest problem I see is that the turbine is WAAYYY too small to drive that alternator. Something like this would need a prime mover that could provide at least 2-3 hp (after proper gearing up of course). You would have better luck using a bicycle generator--the kind that rides on the tire. They come in 6V-3W and 12V-6W sizes. The 12V one would be a good bet for this turbine, or you could try a toy motor, run backwards as a generator.

[6488ott]

I have been pondering on a similar idea, but I`m only at the theory stage. Heres what I think; the alternator ideally needs about 4 k rpm to be efficient and with an output of 35 amps depending on spec times 13-14 volts your looking at 500 watts or more. now there are 746 watts per hp so your turbine needs to produce at least 70% of a horsepower-and theres no way looking at your footage thats the case.your belts slipping cos it needs a jockey wheel to increase contact radius.

[xapplimatic]

You can use this setup with a load, but you would need to gear down the output of the turbine so you get fewer RPMs but more torque I suspect.....

[Maxime124]

No, you can't, because the car alternator has to rotate to fast to generate enough (2000 - 3000 rpm). It is possible if you modificate it with strong permanenent magnets like you say, but that's a bit complicated.

[sandena89]

can we use car alternator just like that without any modifying? (put magnet, change the lane or else) coz i have few car alternators i was thinking can i use them as wind generator 

[XTCMatrix]

what would happen if you use this on top of a electric car to charge the batteries?

[Maxime124]

@XTCMatrix

Not much I guess, because it doesnt work good enough.

[XTCMatrix]

@Maxime124 You think if there was a way to... well if you calculated the amount of battery use/km and how much something like this could charge/km, could there be a way to generate enough power to charge it the same amount as the car is using.

I guess when the car moves the blades spins faster to eh?

[Maxime124]

@XTCMatrix

It would spin faster indeed, but it would never generate enough torque. You can see it in this video too. The alternator spins nice without a load, but from the moment you connect a resistor it won(s pin anymore. The same happened with another PM aleternator. From the moment I connected a bicycle light bulb, it stopped rotating and the belt was slipping over the pulley.

[smartasscomments]

@XTCMatrix It would take away from the speed of the car. First law of thermodynamics. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It is mutually convertible. Perpetual motion machines are not possible.

[wwarsin]

@XTCMatrix Good idea, but there would be too much wind resistance. Your car would spend more energy negating the wind resistance than this thing would produce...

[rstevewarmorycom]

@XTCMatrix Then you have to run the motor harder because of

the drag, and you can't get anywhere near as much back. All

you are doing is driving an electric car with the regenerative

brakes on all the time. Laws of Thermo: Can't win, can't even

break even.

[ProthoPectore]

what about smaller bicycle wheels? like bmx 20" wheels or even the kid 12" wheels?

that would reduce the gearing.....



[Maxime124]

@ProthoPectore

It would indeed reduce the gearing ratio, but a car alternator has to turn very fast before he works well. For this kind of turbine you need a low rpm alternator.

[arkansasbean]

First of all, great job! Do you have any recomendations of how to improve on it? Like, a diferent kind of altenator?

[Maxime124]

@arkansasbean

Another alternator would probably have done the job, but those special ones are rather expensive. Maybe it would also have been a little bit better with a good belt around the "pulleys". The belt in this video is made of the inner tube of a bicycle wheel.

[toob247]

aw man from what i've seen a 200 dlr wind blue type pma alternator and this would have been perfec,t nice job with available parts

[Maxime124]

@toob247

Indeed, but It was not my intention to spend some money on it.

[meisterjager66]

wrong gear ratio bud,2 to 1 or 3 to 1 work better.give alot more torque

[Maxime124]

@meisterjager66

That's what I tried to explain in my previous comments.

[ghoku14]

what is field excitation?U

[ghoku14]

in your vid it seems its working,the alternator is turning how come it doesnt work at all?

[Maxime124]

@ghoku14

Because the torque of the excitatition field is bigger than the torque of the turbine. Laws of electricity.

[MrSketch1980]

Great Idea, You can better this very easliy, simply mount all of this onto your roof, the wind is more constant up there and also more powerful than on the ground. You may wanna adjust your blades so that they will be more steader. But other than that Great Job. Remember to use a deep cell marine battery for the storage of the engery you created and also get you a DC to AC converter.

[Maxime124]

@MrSketch1980

This setup does not exist anymore, I disassembled it to recycle :).

[ghoku14]

@Maxime124 may i ask why did you disassembled this set up does it not work?

[Maxime124]

@ghoku14

Yes, it didn't work and I had to do to much modifications to let it work. Beside that it was standing in my way. I am building HAWT now, but I don't have the time to complete it for the moment.

[haansgruber]

Try a motor from a treadmill. the output will improve drastically

auto alternators are not designed to run under these circumstances (pulse)

it requires about 2200 rpm's continuous

reuk[.] co[.] uk/Ametek-PM-Motors[.] htm

peace :)

[Maxime124]

@haansgruber

Indeed, a car alternator needs a big rpm to generate something. It is possible if you change the inside of the alternator, but it is a lot easier to use a one that is ready to use (like a treadmill motor like you say). But the big problem is that this turbine does not have enough torque to spin a generator. It even did not work with a small PM alternator :).

[haansgruber]

Smaller pulley on the alternator = more revolutions per sq./m of wind

put a VOM on that puppy so we can see the output

good job

peace :)

[Maxime124]

@haansgruber I tried that also, but in that case, the start torque was to small to launch the alternator (because of the small pulley, n1/n2=P2/P1).

[nitewolf3369]

how much power can this thing produce? i like this set up . i'm looking to go off grid.

[Maxime124]

@nitewolf3369

It does not produce anything at all with this setup. We only could get some results if we made our own rotor (with magnets and coils). You can see that in another video on my account. But again the production is very low. To have a good result you should buy a special low rpm generator.

[pinponelmono]

BRAVO!

[Caleb6543]

Nice work! I like the extra belt so you don't have to pull things apart to change it and the ladder rungs on the support for easy access to the top.

[Maxime124]

Actually, the frame is from an old desk.

[jamaoful]

you should try to change the relation between the radius of the bicicle and the alternator.

[Maxime124]

Indeed, but the problem is that the turbine doesn't has such a big torque. We changed it into a system with coils and neodymium magnets, directly under the rotor.

[jamaoful]

@Maxime124 

[jamaoful]

@Maxime124

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