This might be a stupid question.

If you took a battery operated vehicle and equipped it with a thin wind turbine, at normal operating speeds would it become 'self-sufficient'?
Considering the amount of torque and rpms the turbine would be able to produce, compared to the amount of energy being consumed by a battery operated vehicle, wouldn't it work?
And if it was not able to produce exactly as much power as is being consumed, wouldn't it come fairly close ?

Probably not. The heat energy lost alone by the circuitry from the battery will all be wasted, and the turibine has friction and so does the whole of the vehicle so it wouldn't be very efficient, ofcourse this is why we have generators in cars, connected to the drive shaft (?!) Which is mroe efficient than the method you propose, plus you're wasting energy pushing the wind turbine into the drag, but nice idea anywat
If you had a method of producing all your power from what you output was, you wouldn't move at all. (no energy going to the kinetic). What is really needed is an external input, such as solar panels as the system of moving a car is never going to be efficient with all the drag and heat loss etc.

An interesting idea. You could put wind turbine on wheels with a motor, but it would be very heavy. The location would be critical too, but I quite like the idea.

But you couldn't have a turbine that turns because the car is moving to create more energy. That would be a perpetual motion machine.

The battery could recharge when the car was parked, but you would have to remember to park in a windy spot! Like on top of a building!

It would be easier to have an electric car and have charging points connected to a turbine.



[edit on 6-4-2006 by Clipper]

You could take a hard plastic 4-6 inch thick 32 inch wide flat fan blade, and attach it at the center point on the roof of a compact car or a magnum p/u truck.
At the center point where it attaches to the roof a simple gear or a worm drive set-up would basically turn the fan into a drive shaft.
Like a free spinning pancake-wheel on the roof that would generate at least the same amount of wind velocity or rpm that is passed through while travelling.
A small stationary drive shaft through the a vehicles roof driven by a strong ultralight fan blade,
nah, somebody would stick their hand in it and the Consumer Protection Agency would declare the whole concept to be a WMD.
oh well.

You see anything odd about this picture?


If they wanted to harness the power of wind would they have stacked the "sails" or blades on top of each other? These fans don't function in a 'free spin' mode so I guess they are just geared to move very slowly, because compared to every other prop or turbine blades used throughout the world these are basically worthless. 15 -18 rpm MAX.
Most women would throw their vibrator away if it moved that slow,or at least change the batteries... but they wouldn't be satisfied with a dysfunctional tool. And the new & improved ones look identical to the original ones, they just put the new one's right next to the antiques.
But hey, about 60-75% of them DO turn.
Addicted to oil and suffocating ourselves in the fumes, progress is beautiful.

The problem with your theory is the conservation of energy laws, if you were to freewheel the turbine then the drag would be minimal consisting of frictional losses aerodyanic drag ect..But as soon as you loaded up a generator the energy required to drive it would be more than you would get out, in simple terms you cannot create energy you can only convert it from one source to another with losses. The only advantage you could possibly gain with a system like this would be to store energy from the turbine when its used as some kind of regenerative braking conept when the normal powered means is turned off.

The only way to find free power is:

-Confuse the Universe
-Steal it from another Universe (could be SLIGHTLY difficult )
-Ask God Nicely.

Originally posted by Shakeyjc
-Ask God Nicely.

I quite like that

Nothing is a stupid question here.

'Ask God nicely.' Pah! Read this: www.abovetopsecret.com...' - Perpetual Motion! Electrical Power from Nothing!

That is a thread I posted last night that has a disticnt lack of replys. Read it, and post!

I have always thought about putting four generators on the cars axles, and hooking them directly up the the alternator or battery, but I have been told that it would not work. Stupid laws of physics.

Invariably, energy from the car's motor is lost and not regained --
if I recall, efficiency in most Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) is somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 - 12 %.
So, we consider:

- Ineffeciency of ICE
- Energy lost to wind resistance (especially big SUV-type cars, but all cars, of course)
- Energy lost to stopping and starting the car's motion
- Energy lost to the friction of tires against a road


That said, don't batteries recharge when one runs a car? (I don't know very much about cars, but I can speak coherently about physics, haha).
At any rate -
it is definitely a method to consider, and certainly not out of the realm of possibility -- it's certainly not a stupid question.

Try creating a small vehicle (battery operated?) and see if it can help efficiency or duration of charge if you change the mechanics of a recharging system. Sounds like a good research project for the forum