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Question: Is there a book that describes how to make electric generators, solar, wind power from house hold items?

(Posted by: on 2010-07-01 07:48:02)

I want a book that has some different designs for making electric generators from things like old exercise bikes, fan blades for wind power, low cost solar panels, or any other kind of alternative energy that is easily produced from the home, and with recycled or low cost materials. How to store the energy would also be a plus. All I can seem to find are book specifically for one type of alternative power(i.e. just solar, or just wind). I'm hoping there is something out there that is more like what I have described. Well I was more hoping just for a book that shows simple electrical hook ups to say turn an old exercise bike into a generator of sorts. Things like that. I assumed old fans, and such wouldn't produce very much energy, but If I use an exercise bike for an hour every day anyway I thought it would be cool to harness, store, and use some of that power to watch TV while im on the bike, or turn a radio on for a few hours or something along those lines. Just like those new crank radios.

Answers:

Posted by: linlyons on 2010-07-01, 10:03:33

One would hope that there isn't one. having worked 2 years testing fans, i can assure you that old stuff lying around at home is not going to make a useful amount of electricity. solar panels are expensive because of the rare materials that are needed to make them work. you probably could build a heat collector to use to heat of a water tank, which would empty into your main water heater, so that it wouldn't have to work so hard. That wouldn't be terribly difficult, although you'd either have to have a switchable pump in the system, or put the heating element somewhere lower than your pre-heat tank, so that circulation would work by gravity. Edit: if you had a radio with rechargeable batteries, your exercise bike would be able to produce enough power to do that. you probably would not be able to produce enough electricity to power your tv while you were riding. the fact that there aren't a lot of such devices is likely because they just don't produce enough power to be useful.

Posted by: Robert K on 2010-07-01, 13:42:46

When you hane internet you do not need a book. Just google ideas: you find stuff which has been build by people with descriptions e.g. below.

Posted by: Sonaly on 2010-07-02, 08:35:26

There is a list of nice pages were you can find something like how to make your own solar panels and your own wind generator how to recondition batteries and something more GreenProductsolutionPr.com GreenProductsolutionPr.com/ Battery GreenProductsolutionPr.com/ Store I hope that this will helps you

Posted by: alphabet_s0up on 2010-07-03, 19:34:06

I'm not sure how much electric energy you would actually get from the mechanical energy of you riding a bike. I don't think it would be enough to power a TV. There are a lot of cheap/ free alternative energy sources though. I guess it really depends on what you're looking for and how much you're looking to spend. Solar Panel, Wind Power, and Energy Storage Guide: tinyurl.com/ SolarPower4Home Alternative Energy Generator (neither wind or solar): tinyurl.com/ FreeElectricityGenerator I think the second one might be more along the lines of what you're looking for. It's a essentially a low cost, self-powering generator that works independently of anything like solar or wind power. I've personally used the first one to make solar panels. A friend of mine used the second, which is how I heard about it. He says he spent about $90 on materials, whereas I spent closer to $150 for the panels.