admin answers:

The smallest I would recommend is 5000 watts. This should be enough to operate the well pump, small cooking appliances, lights, television, fridge, etc. Power will be limited and you will have to be careful not to overload the generator. I power my house with a 5500 watt generator. You should also consider installation of a proper transfer switch and be aware of the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Read through my generator page listed below for more information.

If your main goal is to power the well pump solar or wind are not feasible. The power requirements are simply too high. It may be an option to supplement your electrical consumption for other smaller loads however.

admin answers:

I’m not sure from your question what you want to make, the generator itself or a system that generates power?

The generator itself would be very difficult for home production. Take apart a car alternator or starter motor (which would work as a generator) and see whats involved. Using these same items to generate power from another source such as wind is perfectly reasonable to do with directions how available on the Internet.

Having said that, if you just wanted to make something that worked but wasn’t actually practical, take a look at the link http://www.howard.k12.md.us/res/MakingStuff/motor.html
This would work as an ac generator if the ends of the wire wound on the cork were connected to some type of collector ring and brushes and the needle turned by something

admin answers:

While I’ll admit that coal fire power is a pollutant, at this present time we could use it to boost the grid and lower costs of power. The problem is, it takes longer to build a nuke plant and more safeties must be in place. I believe in using what we must as a stop gap until the Green Industry catches up and this could take several years to do.
True Solar power would be best as far as emissions are concerned, but this is also more expensive to set up and when there is no sun shine for several days this could be a problem.
When Con-Edison first started up, each neighborhood had their own generators, which covered a certain area. This agenda could be used again with the solar idea and by doing so, could reduce costs to those in their areas if they would also set up solar panels to help in producing their own power and if any was not used it could be diverted into the grid and help the other areas.
I believe through a system of wind, coal, nuclear, solar and even water powered generators we could produce much more than we need, by combining the grids of each.

Edit: If I could find a way to run my house without the need of any outside influence I would build a high fence around it of stone and secede from the union. Welcome to the free nation of Liberty!

admin answers:

I am so outraged that I spent the morning emailing the governator and our representatives in Sacto. I have been plaguing them with emails since this budget debaucle began, but this is the worst possible outcome! It really irritates me that they reached into the pockets of those of us who are still hanging on to our jobs and homes, but can barely keep ourselves from falling off the proverbial financial cliff. We have seen increases in food, electric, water, trash collection to the tune of 30-35% in the last year, losses of 35-40% in our home values, IRAs, 401ks and investment accounts and our wages have been stagnant or barely able to keep up with the increases in health care premiums or co-pays. In order to pay the increased personal income tax, we will have to save every dime of the $13 in federal stimulus and will still owe about $1300 to the state. In addition, the increase in vehicle license fees, sales taxes and other provisions will only serve to slow down purchases because consumers will tighten the purse strings even more. What burns me most is that they never even discusses suspending free services for the education, health care, social services or welfare to anchor babies of illegals. There is a huge sigh of relief in the illegal alien community that at least they will not be affected by the income tax increases while they still retain their free benefits while all of us taxpaying suckers get less government services and huge tax increases. Even my avatar is red faced with the passage of this budget! Did you notice, they basically snagged everything we could have gotten that might have benefitted us from the fed? We won’t be able to take advantage of purchasing energy efficient appliances, solar panels, wind generators, new cars and can’t even spend our stimulus because we will owe it to the state.

admin answers:

Not only cost effective, but profitable to the participants.
I am currently (no pun) building a wind turbine generator, for under $500. I had to buy a welder (got a deal) and if it works out, I’ll be building more of them, for sale.
If you have the proper type of electric meter outside your home, it will run backwards as you generate your own electricity, if you generate more than you use. Thus, you can actually make money doing this. If you end up with an electric vehicle and charge it at home…
You get the picture.
Here’s a search results page for this, called “Distributed Generation”——-
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=distributed+generation&fr=ush-ans&ygmasrchbtn=Web+Search
The wind turbine generator:
http://www.otherpower.com/trips3.html
Check it out. They also have a 20 foot diameter version for greater output (more involved, more costly initially) that I may build later on.
I also have plans for a personal solar-trough type generator
that involves a closed-circuit water/steam system.

admin answers:

Hello,our company shenzhen bazhentu are selling that,you may contact our sales manager directly by msn ebwone@hotmail.com.
Her phone:0086-15574832263

1000w wind turbine

Application range:Small water pump system, power supply for home daily use on island, in rural area, remote area, wind-solar hybrid system on farmland, grassland; for navigation tower and frontier sentry..

Other opponents:tower, battery set, solar panel, controller for solar panel, cable wires, storage cabinet (optional), inverter (for AC load), ect…

Description:
Color: White
Net Weight: 45 KG
Gross Weight: 64 KG
Blades Material: Reinforced Nylon
Starting Wind Speed(m/s)：3.0m/s
Cut-in Wind Speed(m/s)：3.0m/s
Rated Wind Speed(m/s)：11.5m/s
Safe Wind Speed(m/s)：50m/s

Characteristics:
1. High efficiency which eauals the trditonal 800W wind generator.
2. Renewable energy could get government budget subsidies.
3. Energy Saving & Pollution Reduction
4. Cost cutting compared with traditional power generating set
5. Around 15 years of life span
6. Complementarily use with solar energy

admin answers:

Hey Taylor, yes, I agree with the other respondents here, there are great breakthroughs to come in the renewable energy business. Let me outline some specifics: Solar panels today, or photovoltiacs to be exact, are only about 12 to 15 % efficient. Over 80% of the suns energy that hit them is only turned into heat, same as if it just hit the ground. They used to be 7%, but we have almost doubled that. The Germans are working on a project right now to harness the suns light and heat to convert to electricity, it is called Desertec. Their plan is to heat oil to over 600 degrees F, then store it in a huge building sized insulated tank. Then using water to oil heat exchangers, they can send water in which will boil in seconds and run a steam turbine. There are several advantages to this plan, not the least of which is the solar array is now 50 to 60 % efficient. A solar factory in the northwest corner of the Sahara Desert can power all of Europe, all day, and all night since the stored hot oil stays above 212 degrees well into the night. Now we have solar electricity even while it’s dark. This is experimental, but if it works that well, you’ll soon see these plants in desert environments all over the globe. Some items further out on the experimental table are liquid salt as a heat medium, and items like liquid nitrogen, and so on. There is plenty of solar energy in the world, we just need to get better at using it, and people like you can make that happen.

Looking at wind, Albert Betz was the scientist who penned what is now called the, “Betz Limit,” a theoretical limit on how much wind energy can be converted to usable torque by a turbine. You can check it out on google or wiki if you like, but in a nutshell, 59% is the maximum theoretical limit of any wind turbine. Well our best units today work in the 30 to 35 % range, well below the Betz Limit. Again, people like you can help us push that envelope out further, so now we can run all the homes in the Pacific Northwest on half the wind farm we would need using todays technology. The same can be said for biomass, landfill conversions, methane use, hydro power, and so on. The area of direct thermal conversion is really old school, even as cool as it is now. There is a woodstove you can buy today that when you feed wood into it and heat it up, it also makes electricity using a Peltier Heat Junction. They work, but are expensive and highly inefficient, again, a work in progress and probably years behind. Global warming is no wimp, just ask anyone on the East Coast USA what they think about it today after the last two “weather patterns,” they have been through. Or check out Sir David Attenborough’s comments on Yahoo’s front page today. K’s comment on fossil technology should be “fracking,” not “fracting,” but he’s correct, we seem to be finding more oil when we should be burning less of it. My feeling on that is if it’s unhealthy to pipe the exhaust from your car to the inside of the vehicle, it’s just as unhealthy to vent it to the outside too.

If you really have an interest in all of this, I highly recommend getting an education in the field and doing whatever you can, we still need more help working all this stuff out. Our home generates about 90% of its own electricity now, with the help of a solar array and small wind turbine. We heat with passive solar and wood, and collect rainwater as well as heat water with the sun, but life would be even better if all this could be done with less resources, less money, and more reliability, that’s where people like you could come in. Good luck Taylor, and take care, Rudydoo

admin answers:

No live voltage – until blades allowed to rotate.

admin answers:

24 volts single phase is not very useful, specially as the frequency is probably varying all over the lot. Why not rectify the 3 phase to DC, which is quite efficient, then use an inverter to convert that to 120 or 240 VAC 50 or 60 Hz, as you prefer.

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admin answers:

The Nuclear plants that are proposed for construction in the US in the next 1-10 years will cost between 5-7 billion dollars per reactor, depending on which design. In the past, they were built for as little as 300 million dollars.

* Provisional contracts for two 1,117 MWe AP1000 reactors at the Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station have estimated final costs of approximately $4.9 billion per reactor. [1]

* On April 9, 2008, Georgia Power Company reached a contract agreement for two AP1000 reactors to be built at Vogtle, at an estimated final cost of $14 billion. [2]

The profit on a running reactor is about $1 million dollars a day, the cost is 5.93 cents per kWh, and includes Uranium for fuel, insurance, waste disposal, and employees like security.
The lifetime cost of new generating capacity in the United States was estimated in 2006 by the U.S. Government: wind cost was estimated at $55.80 per MWh, coal (cheap in the U.S.) at $53.10, natural gas at $52.50 and nuclear at $59.30.
“Future costs” include the cost to decommission a reactor, which is currently around $300 million dollars.
If we expand the topic from electricity to energy in general, Nuclear Power really starts to get cheap. According to Dr. Arthur Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine: “The construction of just one nuclear power station like Palo Verde (CA) in each of the 50 states, with a full complement of 10 reactors, would supply all of the energy that the United States currently imports—with, in addition and at current prices, $300 billion per year worth of excess energy to export.”

Nuclear fission is the splitting of the nucleus of an atom into parts (lighter nuclei) often producing free neutrons and other smaller nuclei, which may eventually produce photons (in the form of gamma rays). Fission of heavy elements is an exothermic reaction which can release large amounts of energy both as electromagnetic radiation and as kinetic energy of the fragments (heating the bulk material where fission takes place). Fission is a form of elemental transmutation because the resulting fragments are not the same element as the original atom.

Nuclear energy is a way of creating heat through the fission process of atoms. All power plants convert heat into electricity using steam. At nuclear power plants, the heat to make the steam is created when atoms split apart — called fission. (Other types of power plants burn coal or oil for heat to make steam.)

The fission process take place when the nucleus of a heavy atom, like uranium or plutonium, is split in two when struck by a neutron. The “fissioning” of the nucleus releases two or three new neutrons.

It also releases energy in the form of heat. The released neutrons can then repeat the process. This releases even more neutrons and more nuclear energy. The repeating of the process is called a chain reaction. In a nuclear power plant, uranium is the material used in the fission process.

The heat from fission boils water and creates steam to turn a turbine. As the turbine spins, the generator turns and its magnetic field produces electricity. The electricity can then be carried to your home, so you can work on the computer, watch television, play video games, or make toast!

MW = Mega Watt (1 million watts)
kW= Kilo Watt (1 thousand watts)

admin answers:

An automobile alternator will generate about 700 watts if spinning at the proper speed. You may need a belt drive to get to that speed.

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admin answers:

A traditional windmill is the easiest to build – that is pretty flat blades mounted in a vertical circle with a tail piece to aim it into the wind. The shaped blades of a propellor type wind generator are much harder to make as are the mixer shaped blades of a vertical windmill.
The big problem of making a model of a standard windwill is getting the power out. The shaft the blade turns on must have a crank or gears that line up with the center of rotation of the head, so the blade axle must have a bearing on either side of the crank or gear head – in a small model, getting these bearings mounted, etc., gets more tricky than in a bigger device.
If pumping is done with a crank, there must be counterweights so the windmill is only lifting water and not the weight of the shaft. If gearing is used, the tail must be bigger to offset the torque from the load (otherwise the spinning of the blades will rotate the head around the gears.
The second reference in particular will give you good data.