Automobile Generator to 110V

The inverter part will work, using the kind that plugs into a car cigarette lighter socket.

However, 30A x 12V = 360W. Athletes can maintain this for a while, but the average human is good for only around 130W on a sustained basis.

Remember "Soylent Green", where one guy pedals the bike so the other guy can read by the light?

Dear Tornado: Does this mean ( if avg is 130W) that a 90A generator would be better, or would it be proportionately harder to pedal to have a 90A gen.?

At 12 volts, 90 amps would be 1080 watts. This would be much harder to pedal than 130 watts, although very fit persons could sustain this rate for a short time.

Dear Toronado: I was thinking an average person might be able to do 5-10minutes (--on the WAY to having MUCH greater physical-capacity, ie, becoming "fit."). So if one had enough output, batteries are charged faster? After 20-30 minutes rest, maybe one could do ANOTHER 5-10 minutes, so that after 4-6 hours, the "grid" would be charged. One pedals without drawing on the grid until its fully charged. Then one maintains the grid by 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there, while drawing on the grid. Someone said solar panels, and I hear photovoltaics CAN convert sunlight to electricity even on mildly cloudy days? And while solar is much better as a charging system, what do you do if power's out and you want to watch a late-night movie? Have a pedal-system. The power went out, here, for several hours. That's why I found this so interesting. I was cheifly worried that my food would spoil. I have acclimated to no air(HVAC), but find fans & a refrigerator allow this. Otherwise, it'd be much more difficult:(

This is mostly a matter of simple arithmetic, combined with some information about average home power consumption.

Some folks can do better, but the average person might be good for about 120 watts over an 8-hour period, which equals 960 watt-hours per day, or almost 1 kilowatt-hour per day.

I'm not up to speed on average home power usage, which varies a lot anyway, but numbers like 20 to 40 kilowatt-hours per day seem reasonable. (You can look at a recent electrical bill and get closer numbers for your particular situation.) But your pedal power is only about 2.5% to 5% of your utility power. The more you spend on Wheaties, the faster you can pedal, though.

My personal guess is not even for one minute........

No, the rated output current of the alternator has nothing to do with it (provided it's high enough, and 30 amp is plenty). The pedaller will just go as hard as he can and the actual output current will adjust itself to give corresponding power.

As long as the alternator speed is about right, but from a quick check that wouldn't seem to be a problem.

Codey

They are going to be very small appliances being the typical human in good shape cant sustain a continuous load of much over 75 watts physical output. Short bursts can be considerably higher than than of course but on a long haul load 75 watts is typical but will likely be much debated here soon enough.

Give at best a conversion efficiency from paddling to final usable 120 VAC electrical power of less than 50% you will be dead tired before the first pop tart pops up!

Put the bike next to the stove. Make it 2 tandems - 4 athletes. Eat food with short cooking time and hope you get the calories you have invested in this energy boost.

Thanks to all of you for info. I guess I'll Try to train my Mule to peddle the bike....

"Peddle" = "sell"; "pedal" = "operate a foot crank"; "paddle" = "spank" or "propel a canoe."

--Ed. C.

I flunked spelling in school, too....

You could probably just put the rear wheel right up against the small oem pulley on the alternator.

dlee, if you go ahead with this idea could you please post a u-tube video so we can see it in use

Will post a u-tube when I get it all together, if I'm not dead of exaustion. (sp?)

"Will post a u-tube when I get it all together, if I'm not dead of exaustion exhaustion."

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Most resources say that the average human can produce 140W for about 10 minutes before they are exhausted. Trained athletes can sustain maybe 250W continuously and the best can put out up to 2HP (about 1500W) for short bursts (I had to help design a 4 quadrant DC drive for a treadmill once, we had a marathon runner that could overload our 1-1/2HP motor!).

So back to the 75W level mentioned earlier just to be reasonable about the amount of time. Lets say you build up to being able to do this for 2 hours per day. That is 2 x 75W x 2 hours or 150Wh (Watt-hours) of energy. But to use your car alternator, you have mechanical transmission losses, electrical conversion losses in moving it to the batteries, more electrical conversion losses inverting it back to 120VAC, then some more transmission losses getting it to your kitchen. So now for 2 hours of pedaling, you have probably stored about 125Wh, or 0.125kWh. If you want to run your SMALL 1000W microwave oven, this will provide you with about 7.5 minutes of cooking time. So you could theoretically cook a small meal with enough calories to allow you to pedal for 2 hours. If you want tea with that, start pedaling!

The word is exhaustion.

Sorry, I didn't see the next response before answering.

A much simpler, less strenuous and perhaps safer solution would be to connect the inverter to the battery of your car during those times of electrical utility failures. Best if you use a deep cycle battery with a battery isolator along with your auto's battery. This way you have a full battery of charge to supply the inverter, can recharge the deep cycle with the car, can start the car and enjoy the electricity that you have created.

My field research always found that I could not manually generate enough electricity to run a small refrig to keep the necessary amount of hydration beer cold enough to restore my fluids and electrolytes. Net result was that I always ended up drinking warm beer.

Good Luck, Old Salt

Your planning is skewed. As a longtime offshore houseboat dweller, you soon learn that you use the sun to heat water, gas or a solar oven for cooking, gas for refrigeration, and bicycles for transportation. Put the tire back on. If you want light, use LEDs. Communication? FM earphones. You can make all the electricity you need, but there are more efficient permanent magnet generators available. Get a solar panel for the batteries.

http://www.gotwind.org/diy/300w-Pedal-generator.htm

An alternator makes AC and it is converted to DC. Some companies sell kits to up hook to your alternator to get 20 amps at 110V. This is for a normal over 60 amp alternator.

You also need a adjustable rod to hold the accelerator pedal to maintain needed RPM.

I have one but never used it as I purchased a portable generator.

OK human pedal power is not logical. Plan "B". Forget the bicycle. Years ago I worked in a machine shop in the Tenn. hills. The power co. wanted a small fortune to bring in 3phase to the shop. The shop owner hooked a small 120ac motor to an old large dc motor.This generated enough 3 phase 220ac to power his whole shop. I need easy to understand instructions to build this, plus whatever inverters, etc that's required,using solar power/w battries for the 120ac motor. The finish power would be 220ac to power my house. Please remember that I'm mechanical minded not electrical. The whole reason for me doing this is to provide as much power as I would need, being completly self sufficant (sp?)

Here I am, replying to myself. Life is funny, keep laughing...I want to add that I"m retired & on a VERY limited budget...

There's nothing worse than people who correct other people's spelling... except those who correct their grammer as well.

That ok, I laugh at myself & smile at those people.

Another aspect of using an off-the-shelf automotive alternator is the speed at which the alternator must turn to get any output at all. This is generally much higher than the "idle" speed of your typical automotive engine- measure the ratio of the diameters of the drive/driven pulleys to get a feel for the difference. If you can not operate the alternator above the "cut-in" rotational speed, you will get no output at all. Of course, the faster you spin the alternator (up to some magic "upper limit", the more power you can extract.

G.A., cwarner.

A typical automotive alternator needs at least 1600 RPM to reach 12V. For direct connection to a 27" bicycle wheel:

(27 inches)(∏)(1600 revs/minute)(1mile/63360 inches)(60 minutes/hour) = 128 MPH

...and he has to maintain that speed until his toast pops up!

The idea would be to drive the alternator shaft OD via friction with the tread of the bike tire. A 20 mm knurled shaft overlay could replace the pulley, producing thousands of rpm at pedalling speeds, without having to do any mods to the bike.

Exactly my thoughts!

If he replaces the rotor winding with a magnet in the car alternator (see that on YouTube with many videos on this), then he might manage to output a few volts for a minute as the high rpm will not be needed.......

Yes but the pedaller still has to put the power in.

With an alternator pulley diamater 40mm and bike wheel 600 mm, I estimate alternator doing 5000 rpm at a bike speed equivalent to about 20 mph. The alternator will charge at that speed, probably giving as much power as the pedaller can input. So it seems practical.

Codey

OK human pedal power is not logical. Plan "B". Forget the bicycle. Years ago I worked in a machine shop in the Tenn. hills. The power co. wanted a small fortune to bring in 3phase to the shop. The shop owner hooked a small 120ac motor to an old large dc motor.This generated enough 3 phase 220ac to power his whole shop. I need easy to understand instructions to build this, plus whatever inverters, etc that's required,using solar power/w battries for the 120ac motor. The finish power would be 220ac to power whatever I can. Please remember that I'm mechanical minded not electrical. The whole reason for me doing this is to provide as much power as I would need, being completly self sufficant (sp?)

The more efficienct way to do this would be to use solar cells as the input, charge batteries to allow running when the light is low (and for peaks in power usage), and use an inverter to provide AC. The motor and generator add unnecessary losses. The cheapest inverters are single phase, but three phase ones are available, too.

We can do this but first you need to define exactly how much power you really need.

In an earlier post you mentioned worrying about food in your freezer or fridge spoiling during a power outage. Its a valid concern but you should be aware that a freezer will retain cold for a long time if you don't keep opening the door or lid.

Off-grid people have to deal with this every day. Some of them shut off the freezer and fridge over night to conserve battery power. They actually put a timer on it so it goes off automatically every night.

Depending on how frequently and for how long your power is interrupted you can adopt several power conservation techniques. For some money you can install a backup system which in conjunction with energy conservation measures will ride through several hours of power outage. Your proposal is a gold plated version when a basic approach would suffice.

The alternative power resellers will always offer a solution that puts your money into their pocket. Seldom do they offer low cost solutions that save you money and maybe do not get them a sale.

Hello, I believe your talking about a "phase converter", I use one in my shop, the small ac motor starts a three phase motor which converts the 220 volt single phase into 220 volt three phase. I found it more fully described on the net .
"If you have 3 phase equipment and do not have 3 phase you can build your own converter by using a 3 phase motor the same size or larger than the motor you want to run. The trick is to hook two of the three legs of the motor up to 220. The 3 phase motor gets hooked up to all of the converter legs (of course with a switch in between). The converter motor needs some way to get spinning which could be with a rope, a kick, or a 1/2 hp single phase motor. With the motor spinning turn on the 220. The converter motor will run on 220. Now the 3 phase motor has 3 phases that are just about 120degrees apart that are enough to start a 3 phase motor. The 3 phase motor will not have quite the starting power like it would on true 3 phase but it does start and run."

Here is the correct and most efficent way of doing it.

http://www.electro-tech-online.com/re-projects/100563-3-phase-converter-schematic-miller-system.html

Just trying to point out phase converters have nothing to do with generating power for a house, they are for running 3 phase motors on single phase power, so not a direction Mr. TLee should waste time investigating in his need of energy independence. I'm thinking utilizing the wife's spare time between working all day and fixing supper makes the most sense.

You are right, my memory failed me. My friends shop did have 220v but not 3 phase. I was thinking he made his own 220v from the old DCv motor. I guess I'll concentrate on solar panels & battries. Thanks so much to all of you.

Going back to your original post I see mention made of 110V single phase. From where did the 3 phase come in.

I asked how long and how often these power outages take place. No point in doing a $3000 solution if $300 will suffice.

So back to the beginning. How much power do you need and for how long?

The 3 phase came in because my memory. My friend, using that DC motor in his shop to get 3 phase. It was over 30 years ago & I didn't remember exactly what he had set up.

Now the original question I had won't work. I have learned from you all that I don't have the power in my body to get the power I need to charge the battries. I'll have to stick with solar panels & battries. Thanks to you all anyway.

sLee wrote: " I'll have to stick with solar panels & battries"

That gets expensive! Thousands of us have to deal with exactly the same situation all the time. Most of us go with the $300 solution why do you feel you have to have the $3000 solution?

I must have missed the $300 solution in all the answers Iv'e received. Please tell me what it is that will power a small household with just the essentuals for long periods.

You missed it because you keep ignoring my question as to how much energy you need and for how long.

You said you have frequent power interruptions. I asked how frequenty and how long do they last.

Until you can say how much power you need no answer will help you much.

Your comment about solar tells me you have been listening mostly to all that hype and nonsense the solar guys put out. You said the pedal power idea was only for emergencies. That suggest you are not ready to go off-grid at this time.

You evidently also missed my comment regarding how long a fridge can keep cool.

We had a traffic accident here last week where a power pole got snapped and a gas line ripped up so bad they evacuated everyone for a quarter mile around. We were lucky because we were allowed to return after 7 hours but the power was not restored for 12 hours and some people did not get power back for 17 hours. People around here are accustomed to such outages. With the nearest town 50 miles away no place to evacuate to except an empty field.

OK elnav, In the near future I truly expect everything, including power from the power Co. to be much more expensive & no one will be able to pay their price. I want to be able to supply my own power forever. I have my own garden, greenhouse, mules to tend the garden, etc. A depression is coming, worse than we had in 1929. I want to be prepared for everything I can. Plus the fact that I'm retired & have a very limited income with not much money to invest in this. Now, is that enought info for you. Thanks much

if it's the end of days as you suggest, having electricity may not be the top priority?

anyone care suggest a list?

Garthh, I'm not saying it's the end of the days. The govts. of the world is going to change. Our US govt is in the process. If you have been following what has & is really happening in Wash. DC for the past 10/20 yrs. you would know what I'm saying. I suggest you investigate it all. Many thounsands of people in the U.S. are in a group(not all working together, mainly own thier own). These people are refered to as "preppers". Just google that word & you will learn about them (us) as I am talking about. We are planners for the worst because "the new world order" is getting a large controling hold on most of the world now. The are/will form a world dictatorship. Something like communisum (sp?). Check it all out before you make the wrong judgement.

then, won't bullets be far more valuable than electricity?

I can find all manner of doom & gloom scenarios on the interwebs, doesn't make them true. One could could easily argue that the present state of affairs is more beneficial than overt control.... slavery isn't all that efficient

Back to the subject this thread has turned to, if you outline what you would like to do, it will be easier to craft a potential solution. list in order of priority the devices you want to power & how much power they require, water will be at the top of most everyone's list

Why did you not say so in the first place? That makes it so much clearer. You and I are in exactly the same boat and I only get a pension of $300 per month. Our utility bill runs $200 in winter. Pad rent is $175

You would think I was the government running a deficit budget. Because our sun insolation is only 1.9 hours per day in winter and winter here last six months it gets a bit difficult. So even if I had the money it simply aint gonna work.

There is a low cost device called KILL-a-WATT ( sells on Amazon for around $20) that enables me to measure the actual power consumption of any plug in electrical devioce. There is also a more expensive instrument called TED5000 (about $200) that can monitor 240V as well as 120V right in your electrical panel.

This allows me to monitor exactly what power I use and decide which appliances to turn off. With this data on hand you will now have a realistic picture of how much energy you actually need.

BTW Of all the energy used in a home 60% is used for heat applications such as house heat, hot water, cooking etc. Some homes already use natural gas for these heat applications but given that cost of natural gas is likely to escalate even this is a candidate for alternative energy.

Living off-grid and using alternative energy is a huge interest area with countless forums and websites dedicated to this subject. Some are flaky some are sensible some downright scary. eople are moving into caves to escape what they thinks is an apocalypse come Dec 21 2012 others are more like Aryan Mights where they form a militaristic society determined to over come any anarchy or mobs looking for food in the expected society disintergration.

And then there are those who simply want to live outside urban concentration camps. These are the people willing to return to a less complex life style based on self reliant agriculture or to use the new buzz word permiculture .

My wife was born and raised on an off grid homestead. I can still remember what post war reconstruction Europe was like and what people had to do to live.

We are not afraid of reverting to an off grid life style based more on permiculture than technology. I'm not a neo-luddite. I have worked in engineering jobs all my life.

One (but not the only one) solution is CHP. Combined Heat and Power.

Passive solar can be adopted even in an existing house although the concept was really int4ended for new house construction.

Wind power is suitable if your local conditions are suited. BTW Denmark generates close to 50% of the national electrical consumption with wind generators.

Solar thermal is a promising technology that has not been explored in depth in North America but is now widely used in Europe and developing countries.

Hydrogen Power has pretty much been belittled into oblivion by the vested interests in the oil based industries. A professor Cornish patented a hydrogen generator but his interests were elsewhere so he sold his patents to raise money for his hospital and medical care projects and naturally the buyer buried the technology rather than advance it.

The list of alternatives to fossil fuel energy is extensive. Far too long for me to write it out here.

In case anyone is wondering; no I am not talking about over unity magical generators or equally vaporous projects tapping into some cosmic energy source.

I am talking about energy sources already in use elsewhere on this planet.

I could write a book but since these have already been written best I can do is point the way.

Let me provide an inexpensive, yet practical experiment before you invest time and/or money into this project.

Get a bicycle. Drive it around a bit. Now install a generator headlamp on that bicycle - just a small headlamp normally used for nighttime bicycling. Now drive your bicycle the same routes you did before. Drive it at night, to insure you are generating the light you need to be seen and to see your path.

You will notice that it can be significantly harder to bicycle with the generator powering the lamp ... and this is just a few watts involved .. so think how much more power you will need to generate via your legs to power bigger devices than a lamp.

Let me add:

I've bicycled across the country, LA to Boston, twice. I've bicycled 203 miles in a day.

But I wouldn't attempt to use a bicycle for any home appliance, except maybe a reading lamp & MP3 player

TO ALL FELLOW POSTERS:

Either I have gotten a little mellow in my years of retirement or some of the posts to this thread have gotten somewhat vicious from my view point (remember Dirty Harry "Opinions are like _ _ _ holes, everybody has one"). I was under the impression that this was supposed to be a place to post questions that you needed an answer to, be it hypothetical or actual, or wanted others comments on a subject.

Sometimes it seems to have digressed to the point where some posters feel it is their duty to make remarks about the intelligence or common sense of people they do not know and have never met. Would you want someone to do that to you when you needed an answer or were attempting to help someone else out with an answer you thought was correct? We are supposed to be helping each other, not attempting to put them down and us up!

On several occasions I have made mistakes or have seen gross mistakes posted. Instead of getting vicious perhaps we should remember "TO ERR IS HUMAN, TO FORGIVE DEVINE". No answer can be helpful if it is hidden in sarcasms or ridicule.

If you feel it necessary, go ahead rip me apart for my opinion. You have done it before and will continue to due it. This is an engineering forum, not a forum to defame people or their thoughts. If you agree with me, Thank you.

Good Luck to All, Old Salt

old salt, Thank You. I am just asking a question that I know nothing about, elctricity. I want to supply my own power forever as cheap as possible. Somehow, using solar power should be able to help provide this, I pray. I might have to resort to several solar panels to get the power I want. I could be just plain stupid, if so I apologize to everyone. Thank You, dlee

Dlee:

Apologies are not necessary, you are smart enough to go to a forum which, hopefully, knows more about the subject than you think you do. Isn't that how we all learned in one form or another? Unlike a few, you admit that you don't know everything about everything, that's the good thing. The bad thing is that a few feel they know everything and everyone else is inferior if they don't also.

I know a lot about mechanical but this is such a wide area that I'm sure that what I know is tiny compared to your area of specialization. But, I always want to learn more. I am respected by my peers for the eclectically wide range of subjects I am knowledgeable in but I am relatively dumb (and I admit it) in many other area that I wish I was more knowledgeable in. I admit I know very little about open heart surgery (only the experience of having it), dental work, theatrics, speech therapy, international finance, quantum physics (only what I had in college many years ago), how to understand a wife, how to understand a daughter, brain surgery, etc.

What I can do is rig up a water supply system real quick for a fighting a fire, make my wife smile (flowers), tune up a '60 Chevy along the side of a road in the dark, sail a 50yr old wooden sailboat, diagnose a plumbing problem, or change a light bulb among other things.

I'm happy with myself even if unknown ignorant others aren't! Enjoy your life while you can. Don't let the Bastards get you down!

Good Luck, Old Salt

Old Salt,

Sounds lke you are in control of what you need to be. I've learned enough on here that what I'm trying to do is not too promising. My son came up with another great idea for getting the power I need to be independent of the power co. It is the greatest invention in modern times. STEAM POWER-I will be looking for an older steam engine with at no less than 5 hp. It's first fuel source will be an old original satilite(sp) dish about 8ft. dia. Many are just sitting in someones yard & they probably would give it away just to get rid of it. The dish will be lined with highly polished alum. (polished with my buffing wheel) & about 4 inches above will be coiled copper tube to run the water thru to make the steam. A back-up fuel system, for nights & cloudy days will be a wood powered boiler. Many problems, hopfully will be solved, as we meet them. I think this is a much better system.

Best Wishes, Dale

P.S. This will be my last post on this site

dlee:

Don't give up on the site, just take a vacation from it. There are many eltremely intelligent people on it who can communicate with you in a civilized and extremely helpful manner. If someone gets obnoxious don't pay attention to them, ccommunicate with those who are helpful, polite and nice to deal with. The subject that you brought up is a very interesting one, one that many of us investigated as youngsters with our bicycles and those little light generators that rubbed against the tire and on up from there. Alternate power no matter what the source is always interesting. You are exploring it several steps beyound that.

Your proposed use of steam power is interesting. Certainly there are alot of factories that have their own plants on site.

Remember- if something or someone gets out of hand, thats why your computer has a DEL key on it!

Good Luck, Old Salt

Dlee...check out all the work this guy did with alternators. You basically need to spin a car alternator at 2100 rpms because the pulleys on a car engine/alternator are 3:1 and usually the engines idles at about 750 rpms.

http://web.media.mit.edu/~nathan/nepal/ghatta/alternator.html

Excellent tutorial on one kind of alternator. It does however ignore self excited alternators which has residual magnetism.

And surely there is among our forum member ship those who remember having to "flash" the field" to regain some residual magnetism. Granted the term is not as relevant to modern alternator as it was to old dynamos with coils insteaqd of permanent magnets or magnetized iron pole pieces

I have a theory why so many people seek to adapt automotive alternators to home generation using muscle power. For many people living in cities and suburbs automotive applications is the only thing they are familiar with as being capable of generating electrical energy.

Gone are the farm wind generators . People have more trouble relating to distant and giant wind turbines. For security reasons people are no longer allowed to visit power generation facilites. I myself have bisited small and larger hydro-electric installations stood next to a water turbine and felt the wholer building shake from the sheer power. I have ducked under 3 story high boilerswhile walking around in a big thermal generation station, and once I even had the experience of walking around on top of the reactor head while #1 was being comissioned. Okay the latter was work related and I had to have a security pass but events in recent times would probably prevent even this happening today.

Real science is gone from our school curriculum. When I went to high school we actually built real electric motors and in shop we experimented with actual generators. Then the insurance people got involved and shut these classes down because they deemed the potential risk unacceptable. In four years of machine shop no one ever needed more than a small bandage for cuts acquired while handling sharp cutters not while the machines were running.

I have never tried to set up a bike driven alternator but years ago a friend of mine was living at his small mine he was digging for opals it was a long way from any civilization & power suppy & to recharge his batteries he used for light etc he set up a lawn mower motor (3 hp) in a frame & attached a car alternator. With the right gearing it produced the max output easily & ran for several hours with only 1 tank of fuel 1.5 litres. The motor was only running at half throttle or less so used very little fuel & maintained the charge in the batteries quite well

I know this is not quite the same but I am a bit lazy & would not be able to maintain the pedaling for the time taken to charge the batteries

What you describe is called a DC genset. I built my first such version back in 1964. It used a Briggs and Stratton lawnmower engine and a 100 Amp Motorola alternator which was new back then. Today several manufacturers offers a variety of DC gensets ranging up to 12kW Polar and Fisher Panda are among the most popular brands. eCycle also offer a good unit including a DIY retrofit to Yanmar air cooled engines. My most recent effort was with a small one cylinder diesel I bought on sale as a demo. Total cost was $300 and it delivers 100 amps which is a good size for most off grid installations. I have designed installations capable of delivering 400 amps at 24V but this is perhaps more than the average home owner is willing to go with. The mechanical work involved in mounting is not insignificant.

A few comments regarding gensets in particular the DC version.

If the consumption of fossil fuel is objectionable ther are other alternative fuels. Propane, methane, natural gas and waste vegetable oil not to mention wood gasification producing a fuel See this link for details.

http://www.green-trust.org/wordpress/2011/08/22/wood-gasification/

Seveal corporations offer conversion kits for everything from small generators to large vehicles. Both dual fuel and one time conversion kits are available. For small engines the kit is only a couple hundred $$

What is important in selecting a genset is sizing it properly to suit the load. Mismatches invariably result in wasted fuel burn. One note concerning propane. If you live in hard winter country be aware propane will refuse to work below certain temperatures. Diesel or vegetable oil engine are much more finiky on this subject. I have had trouble starting my diesel even if there is only a few degrees of freezing and snow on the ground. My latest DC genset intended for off grid was an error. I should have use a gasoline engine. My wife's uncle does use a diesel but the generator and the battery bank not to mention the day fuel tank is inside an insulated building. He makes sure it stays warm.