Generating wind power on an automobile

Ok, shot in the dark random idea here. I'm sure i'm not the first to think of this, but could you generate enough wind power on an automobile to make it worthwhile? I live in the Texas hill country and was coasting over some hills on the highway today and I spotted an old windwill. It got me wondering why you couldn't put small turbines running from the front of the vehicle to the rear? Which could hopefully generate electrical power for the vehicle. At this point I don't know enough about the tech and capacity to understand if it's feasible. I'm not looking for someone else to do the research here, I just wanted to make sure there wasn't a simple explanation as to why it hasn't been done yet or why it wouldn't work. I'll start doing some more research and see what I can come up with

Ok, I'm not a physics expert, but:

If you add a turbine to the front of your car, the blades have to turn. Will this not cause extra drag/resistance to the car moving forward which has to be compensated by burning fuel?

Otherwise it sounds a bit too much like free energy to me.

(I do believe in the latter, but then more in line with the ideas of Tesla et al.)

reply to post by mirador


Hmmm, yes, good point. Perhaps it could be opened at certain times or when a sufficient speed was reached.

reply to post by Parabol



Windmills are generally a motor/generator generating/creating electricity.

A car already has a generator called an alternator which recharges the batteries and other components on a car.

Adding an additional generator to share would be worthless due to the extra weight and materials it would cost.

Now if you combine a vehicle that uses solar power and add in some small windmills to help add additional power.. now that would be something to think about..

The energy generated by a windmill with an automobile in motion would not compensate the energy required to overcome the drag of said windmill, so the gain would be null.

Retractable windmills on hybrid or electric cars to be used when parked could theoretically provide a nice percentage boost to the charge over time, but I doubt they would be very cost effective. With cheap solar panels available wind isn't that atractive for automobiles. The best option would be a windmill on your house, if it could be made silent enough.

I had once thought of the idea myself but I found out from another forum that it wouldn't work because your trying to create energy from the energy you use to move your vehical, it's contradictory. However it would work great as a charger when the car is not moving if combined with solar. Some people have thought about putting windmills on highways & tunnels to catch the wind the vehicles make when driving. Have you ever seen the small windmills in the tunnels of a subway or something? I think that's what those are. It's a good idea anyway.

reply to post by asmall89


I agree with asmall89, windmills along the sides of highways could capture a huge amount of lost energy. Our energy problem will not be solved by just one idea, but by small ones put together.

If electric vehicles had a deployable mast with a verticle rotors, it could run a generator to charge the vehicle when parked.

A wiser approach would be to have larger masts anchored at parking spots.

Otherwise as suggested you actually loose power due to conversion loss with a windmill running during movement.

I would think someone should be able to rig something up that would use wind power to help increase mileage if nothing else. Even a little pinwheel leading to some gears should be able to do something toward that end I would think.

I agree that there has to be alternate forms of energy found. I also think like others here that the turbine for wind power would create a lot of drag (if on a automobile).

What I'd like to find is more information on the video (see below link). Now this seems like a great simple and cheap solution. Anybody know of, or heard of this guy or the gizmo he developed?

Elemental rods Part One

Elemental Rods Part two

This to me seems to approximate perhaps what Tesla was playing around with..

Johnny

[edit on 7/9/2008 by JohnnyAnonymous]

Originally posted by JohnnyAnonymous
What I'd like to find is more information on the video (see below link). Now this seems like a great simple and cheap solution. Anybody know of, or heard of this guy or the gizmo he developed?

I believe this device is real, even though most would pass it off as a hoax. I think this one got swept under the rug again. Just look at the implications of image 5 ..

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I saw this car on youtube, although I'm not sure how they did it, or what they're using. Ugly looking monstrosity.

www.youtube.com...

[edit on 9-7-2008 by Freezer]

Okay, I'm not one to burst peoples bubbles, but...

Wind turbines only transfer a portion of the energy from the wind, to electricity. The rest of it is simply wasted on friction.

If you place a wind turbine on a car, you are using more energy to push the car against the added wind resistance than you would ever hope to get back from the turbine.

In effect, after you've added the amount of energy gained, versus used to push the car, you will realize you might as well have just been dragging a parachute the whole way.


It's good that you're thinking out of the box. Keep that up. But no, this idea isn't what you're looking for.

"I agree with asmall89, windmills along the sides of highways could capture a huge amount of lost energy. Our energy problem will not be solved by just one idea, but by small ones put together."

I would make one huge solar collector of the roads.

The black surface would capture heat from the Sun really well + the friction of the car tires.
Fill the road with flexible water tubes I'd say.

Originally posted by mirador
"I agree with asmall89, windmills along the sides of highways could capture a huge amount of lost energy. Our energy problem will not be solved by just one idea, but by small ones put together."

I would make one huge solar collector of the roads.

The black surface would capture heat from the Sun really well + the friction of the car tires.
Fill the road with flexible water tubes I'd say.

Aside from the incredible cost to do that, and wear and tear... that's actually not a bad idea!

Keep that line of thought up, you might hit something worthwhile!

Originally posted by mirador


I would make one huge solar collector of the roads.

The black surface would capture heat from the Sun really well + the friction of the car tires.
Fill the road with flexible water tubes I'd say.

Yep, you could heat up a lot of water that way. We need to learn how to squeeze all the waste energy out of everything that we can.

Absolutely. There is so much wasted energy potential in everything we use, when you take a step back and actually start adding it all up, you start to wonder if the world is insane.

I say we start with the Gyms. I mean, why work against gravity, when you can work against a generator?
That was actually half sarcastic.

But there is so much heat waste from factories, incinerators, etc... none of it's being used. We're simply heating the air with it... as if we needed to do that.

We also need to focus on better insulation.
How many times have you walked into a business in the winter, they've got their heat blasting like a damn flame thrower... and a few steps away, GIGANTIC windows, with a revolving door next to the heating vent!?
Same goes for summer time with AC.

Cars idling while they wait for a friend...

Toilets flushing a gallon or two of water, and none of it gets used to do anything? It just follows gravity? All that work to pressurize it up to the toilet, and we just drop it back down again?

In fact... wasted water in general. Wouldn't it make more sense to use a little water under pressure to clean the bowl, rather than a whole whack of it that just trickles over the surface?

Computers... left on ALL NIGHT. Doing NOTHING. In fact... any household electronics for that matter.

Our houses need warming at night, and cooling during the day... we're doing nothing to trap that.

Automatic doors... when you're own weight standing on that mat is more than enough energy to spring a door open, why use electricity at all?

Theres gotta be better ways of heating an element than shunting 20 Amps through it at 112VAC. 4 Big screen TV's don't use THAT much energy.

The list is endless.

reply to post by johnsky




I know exactly what you are talking about. All the little things will add up quickly. Just this last winter, I did a couple of small things and cut our heating bill almost in half. Right now I am working on a project to lower the air conditioning cost. I hope it works. I think I will have it together in a couple of days.

I'm not sure what the layout of your house is like, but in older times, prior to the invention of air conditioning, households would employ the use of a barrels of water.

What would happen is, during the night, as the temperature drops, the water in the barrels would cool down slightly slower than the ambient air, and hence, slow the rate of cooling of the house.

During the day, as the house is trying to warm up, the barrels of water would slow the rate of heating.

The result was the temperature of the house remained closer to the average temperature between day and night.


If you've got an attic and unused space in the basement, might be a good idea. Of course, this also depends on whether your floor boards can handle that kind of weight, and if you can get a hold of water barrels.

Take a look online for it. Or go search your library for history books related to the subject. In combination with a little AC, you might be able to regulate your houses temperature better.

Originally posted by MBF
reply to post by johnsky

 

I know exactly what you are talking about. All the little things will add up quickly. Just this last winter, I did a couple of small things and cut our heating bill almost in half. Right now I am working on a project to lower the air conditioning cost. I hope it works. I think I will have it together in a couple of days.

This thread is going OT a bit, but I guess that's not a problem since the topic starter has received an answer.

But yes, little things do add up quite quickly.

I've been through the house with a device like the kill-a-watt meter to find how much energy everything was using when on and when off.

I've seriously found lamps that apparently had such a horrible transformer in it that it used 40 Watt... when OFF. 24/7.. plugged into the wall.

Nowadays I have a number of strategically placed power strips with master switches. One switch to turn of all TV/audio stuff. One power strip per computer system. Flip the switch and the machine (modern motherboards always use some power, have network cards active for wake on LAN etc. etc.), monitors, speakers, you name it... everything on/off with just a second of work.

No need to plug everything in/out and an easy way to save on average between 50 and 150 USD/year.

Google:

phantom load
standby power usage
etc.

FACT:

"For any single appliance the load is never very large (the most inefficient designs draw 15-20 watts[2]), however when factored over all of the appliances in a country like the U.S. the load can come to billions of watts. Some studies have suggested that the total phantom load caused by the United States alone would provide enough power to handle the electric needs of Vietnam, Peru, and Greece.[3]

Alan Meier, a staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in Berkeley, noted that many household appliances are never fully switched off, but spend most of the time in a standby mode. His 1998 study estimated that standby power consumption accounted for approximately 5% of total residential electricity consumption in America, “adding up to more than $3 billion in annual energy costs”. According to America's Department of Energy, national residential electricity consumption in 2004 was 1.29 billion megawatt hours (MWh)—5% of which is 64m MWh. The wasted energy, in other words, is equivalent to the output of 18 typical power stations. His 2000 study showed that standby power accounted for around 10% of household power-consumption."

Source: en.wikipedia.org...

Please let that sink in and spread this Eco-Tip!

Additional tip:

There are nowadays also wall outlets that can be controlled using a remote. Generally those switches are not using a lot of power (but check out to be sure)... so if a power strip ends up way way behind furniture on the floor, you could check out the remote controlled version.

Usually those devices have a remote with a few channels (say 4) and they usually come with 'listening devices' (usually 3... yay marketing!) for the wall outlets.

We use them for a number of lamps and it's very handy to be able to walk in our living room and switch the lamps on in all corners without having to plug them in/out to save energy.

reply to post by mirador


Ah, you've just discovered one of the major drawbacks to most electrical appliances. Good for you. Most people don't realize this on their own.


You are right. Transformers draw power, even when the device is off.

Basically you have...

[AC PLUG]->[PRIMARY COIL] (gap) [SECONDARY]->[TV/VCR/PC/etc]

So, AC line comes out from household power socket, goes through the bridge rectifier in the electronic device, and into the primary coil.
The secondary coil takes it energy from the primary coil via a ratio (Which is how you step voltage up and down), and sends it to the rest of the electrical device.

The problem with most digital electronics, (and even many analog electronics) is that the power switch is located AFTER the secondary coil.

Which means AC power is still flowing across the bridge rectifier and through the Primary coil, EVEN WHEN IT'S OFF!


If you have a surge protector at your entertainment center (TV/DVD/VCR/CONSOLE) Turn the surge protector off when you're done. It will save ALOT of power.

On the back of your computer, you will find a toggle switch. 0 / 1.
Thats the main AC switch for your power supply. Flip that, and the primary coil wont receive a charge. This will also save you allot of money.

Your computer, TV, stereo, DVD player, Console, Microwave, digital toaster oven, most modern lamps, and ANYTHING with those damn cube shaped wall plugs that take cover other sockets... all of these things aren't actually off when you turn them off. They are all still sucking power from your household AC line.

Thats something most electronics salesmen wont tell ya.

The best thing to do when you leave the house?
Throw the breakers. (Other than the fridge's breaker, or the gas furnace breaker in the winter.)