• In the beginning...

    otter06/07/2014 at 07:02 0 comments

    First thing's first. The hypothesis. From my limited reading and investigation thus far, I should be able to produce a sustainable generation of electricity with the combination of wind, water and solar power. 

    First: Solar Power

    The solar power would essentially be there as a last chance backup. It would generate electricity (I'm looking at about 50W) to run a water pump. This pump in turn will run the water wheel, or step 2.

    Step 2: The Water Wheel

    The water wheel will effectively be the main focus of the generation. It will be attached to an axle that will turn an alternator which will in turn generate the electricity to charge a battery an/or power it's own water pump. The fallback for this is the design of the water wheel, which will be designed to function as step 3, a wind turbine.

    Step 3: The Wind Turbine

    The wheel basic design will consist of the paddle wheel set on spokes in the form of fan blades. This will allow not only the water wheel to function normally but to give it a bit of an extra boost when the wind picks up. This will be the third in the series of redundancies which will hopefully lead to the end goal of significant, sustainable electrical current generation.

    I am in the process of determining how much electricity I hope to be able to generate from the project but as it is small scale for now, I am keeping my expectations low. A self sustaining system would be perfect for now. Optimizations could help improve that, along with scaling. But for now I would be happy to see any kind of result at all.