Alternative Energy Forums

Dear Sirs,

I am a lay person who does not know a thing about technology so what I am about to suggest maybe totally silly but it was a thought that came to me.

Why can’t a light weight car be made that has a lot of surface area for small wind generators that would create replacement electricity for the batteries so that once charged you would not have to plug in the car again to charge the batteries. That would give the car unlimited range as long as you are traveling and turning the fan blades to create the replacement electricity for the batteries. It seems you could put enough fans or wind generators on the car to be more then what the electric engine would consume therefore creating enough electricity to keep the batteries charged indefinitely. You could even place tunnels and funnels for the wind to pass into and through the banks of generators and then funnels and or tunnels so you don’t loose all the advantages that come from stream line design of the car.

I just remember as a kid having these little fan generators that would run different toys. If you put like a kazillion of them on a car and let the driving of the car turn each one of those generators to create electricity and send that back to the battery to keep it charged always. This way you don’t have to plug it in all the time. You can still put it on there for a just in case but for the most part it would run indefinitely once the batteries have had enough charge to start the driving process, with the wind keeping it in always running status. I see how they have improved the wind generator with those big 3 blade turbines you see in the pictures in California and Colorado. It seems like you could develop a weight to power ration with these improved generators to make a car like this and do away with all fuels that create gases.

Sorry if this is dumb and uninformed but I had to at least share it with someone who may have the skill and knowledge to do something with it if it really was possible. The way I look at it is that the issue of the environment is so serious that we need any and all ideas even silly lay persons ones.

Best regards

Roger Ryan

I've been making drawing of just such a car equipped with fans and tubbing to scoop the air into a wind tunnel to turn the generators, and produce electricity to put back into the batteries while driving. Also covering the car surface with solar panels to produce more electricity during the day light hours. Car could also be powered with high pressure air tanks to supply the air motor, all of which would be free from any pollution.

keith peterson

Fans/mini wind turbines are a bad idea. They increase drag to such an extent that the energy gained from them is only a very small proportion of the extra energy used to push the car through air resistance. In other words you have a net loss of energy while in motion. The only times the energy flux is a net gain is if you are coasting downhill and using gravity not the motor to drive the car, you are using the fans to slow the car ie braking or the car is stationary and the wind is blowing. If you were to produce more energy than used on flat road that would create a perpetual motion machine also known as an over unity machine which breaks the laws of thermodynamics. No Joy, sorry.

Hi!

I am planning on electrifying a recumbent bike and am wondering if a wing above the bike would be a good idea. A wing would give shade, provide lift (reducing rolling resistance) and could be covered with solar collectors. The energy gained while while riding would not be much but would charge the battery(ies) when parked.

John

Actually if air were being scooped in , say for cooling purposes on a hybrid, it actually wouldn't produce any (or much more) more drag and you could harvest the extra energy and put it back into the batteries

Again, no joy! Energy harvesting is nowhere near 100% efficient, in fact typical efficiencies are about 25%. This means that if you add a mini wind turbine you gain 25% of the energy you put in and loose 75% of the energy for a net loss of 50% of the energy. The energy into the turbine is in ADDITION to the energy needed to push the air through the cooling system! If you don't believe me try this. Get an old small head squash racket and stick it out the car window at a low speed then attach a fan of similar size to the racket head to the back of the racket head and try again. You will note a large change in how hard it is to hold the racket (don't support against the frame of the window and don't do this where there is traffic, start slow and speed up until a significant force is felt). The racket alone represents the radiator for cooling, the racket and non-powered fan, ie the wind turns the blades not the fan motor, represent the cooling radiator and the power turbine. This being harder to hold against the wind demonstrates the car having to work harder to get the energy out of the wind and as efficiency is less than 100% it means more energy is lost than gained. Another way to say this is the car has a decrease in range, not an increase.

You can't get something for nothing!

There is only one true solution to our energy needs and that is magnetic energy.

I have designed a magnetic motor that would power any electric consuming device. It will revolutionize our automotive world. There will no longer be a need for electric company's or fossil fuels. There are a few that are trying to do this but they left out some very important things and that is why they are having trouble getting them to work properly. They are wasting the energy they are trying to produce.

I am seeking investors to build a prototype and we may have found one but it is still in the works. These motors should run about $5000 for a average home and vehicle and guaranteed ten years maintenance free. They will use battery's to help prolong there life expectancy. The battery's that will be used will have a life expectancy of ten to twenty years, that is why we will only guarantee them for ten years but you may get 20+ years out of it. The motors will be rebuild-able and available in different sizes depending on the amount of power needed.

This technology will incorporated in to battery packs making them portable and usable in smaller items such as cell phones and laptops.

Keep a eye out for this new technology in the next couple of years.

Thomas Brown

MPI said they have a design that has no moving parts. I figured it out. They have found away to extract the energy from the magnets and they must be looping the source together to magnify the results, kind of like looping battery's together in Golf Carts. Its actually amazing and I think it can work. I am going to Radio Shack today to buy a couple things and I will post my findings.

Thomas Brown

Well RadioShack didn't have what I needed but i was able to make my own and it does work.

So now I have a design for a magnetic power source and a design for a fluid free self generating power cell.

We no longer need fossil fuels to power our homes and automobiles.

If you used a housing around the turbine and have a blow off valve ( B.O.V. an air release valve) much similar to the the turbos that are used to boost the combustion engines. But if you use the turbine housing in a electric application it would be very possible to power the car off wind turbine without getting much drag at all.

Brandon

It is interesting to see these posts. I recently watched a program on the Science channel last week. The topic was finding an alternative renewable power source for our automobiles. The one that caught my attention was a lightweight composite car that has a self regenerative power source. The sun, motion, and the braking system of the car itself would generate enough power to keep it running indefinitely. You could plug it in and sell excess power back to the power companies! Think about it… our cars creating enough power to generate enough electricity to light cities and get paid to drive.

DonV

What you want is a perpetual energy machine???? This would violate the law of physics.

Never going to happen.

Drag (and weight) are the biggest factors here.

Wind generators would create massive drag and cut the coefficient to where the car would have the aerodynamics of a brick.

Electricity is a non mobile energy source. Electric cars are inefficient and a pipe dream. While we can make them they are not cost effective (in production and total cost of ownership). But they are the rage and will continue until reality sets in.

Chuck

Not to be demeaning but there is very little understanding to wind and solar power generation on this site.

I have been doing wind and PV generation for over 10 years. My vacation home is run by wind, PV and solar hot water.

The biggest thing to remember is that solar and wind are nice but they are NOT mobile technologies.

My smallest wind generator is 400 watts and weighs 35 pounds. 400 watts will not run any kind of a car for any length of time. Wind has to be at 28 mph to get the 400 watts. At 10 mph I might be lucky to light a 60 watt bulb.

Same with solar panels. I have a 2'x5' 185 watt solar panel that weighs about 30 pounds and will only produce power under direct sunlight.

You need 746 watts to make one horsepower. So to get a 100 horse power electric engine you would need 74,600 watts. This means that you would have to have 403 solar panels that need over 4000 sq ft of space or 187 wind generators that weigh over 6500 pounds.

To mount all that stuff you would need a large truck to hold all the weight and have room to put it all. Total weight would be in excess of 15,000 pounds.

On top of that the coefficient of friction would be extremely high and that 100 horsepower would have a very tough time moving that vehicle down the road at any kind of decent speed. It would have to do at least 28mph to get maximum power from the wind generators and that would be tough to do with only 100 horsepower.

There is a lot of power in one gallon of low molecular weight hydrocarbons (gasoline). Theoretical limit of MPG is about 80-90. But with wind resistance, mechanical loss, road friction and other factors it is not possible to get much more than about 40 in a small car going highway speeds. Don't tell me that there are cars that get 50+ mpg since most of them are not really cars but over-sized go-carts. If you put in 4 people not only will it be uncomfortable but mileage drops significantly. My truck can haul 4 tons of stuff and still gets 15mpg at freeway speeds.

The solar car races in Australia are going 2-3 mph and weigh about 100 pounds. They have no air conditioning or any other electrical stuff. If the clouds come in they don't move.

Solar and wind are for permanent installations and not for mobile power production. While that may change with advances in solar efficiency or new technology it is unlikely to happen in the next 20 years. There is only so much energy in one square foot of sunlight at the Earths surface that can be utilized by humans.

Chuck

DonV said:

Quote: It is interesting to see these posts. I recently watched a program on the Science channel last week. The topic was finding an alternative renewable power source for our automobiles. The one that caught my attention was a lightweight composite car that has a self regenerative power source. The sun, motion, and the braking system of the car itself would generate enough power to keep it running indefinitely. You could plug it in and sell excess power back to the power companies! Think about it… our cars creating enough power to generate enough electricity to light cities and get paid to drive.

Not possible. Perpetual motion machine which is in violation of the laws of physics.

What about night. How far can you go with solar power at night? Or on a cloudy day? Or if you lived in the extreme latitudes? How about driving on heavily treed streets?

It's a pipe dream.

Chuck

Yes, you might get a watt or two and that might push you another 3 inches down the road but it won't keep you going very long.

The added weight and air restriction would override any efficiencies.

Keep in mind that one horsepower will move 550 pounds 1 foot in one second. (550ft-pds/sec). There are 746 watts in one horsepower.

If you had a 3000 pound car, a 100 watt wind generator in the cooling "tunnel" you could move that car about 1/4 of an inch in 1 second.

Assume that some of the 1/4 of an inch would be taken up by the weight of the wind generator.

Plus do you have any idea how many tons of Earth have to me moved to get enough copper to make the windings for a wind generator.

Nope, there is no saving in any kind of electric components in large scale portable power requirements.

Now solar powering a flashlight with low wattage LED's. There is a use for solar. Not in cars.

Chuck