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81 Comments
- spammishking, on 08/20/2008, -2/+55That's pretty sweet, but we don't get any tips on how to build it ourselves? Lets see a parts list and some instructions. Advertising that something is easy and cheap to build is the engineering equivalent of a ***** tease.
- Dested, on 08/21/2008, -2/+28You should just see what Tony Stark created with scraps...
- BradHAWK, on 08/21/2008, -0/+22The author needs to learn watts != watt hours.
- DocHoliday22, on 08/21/2008, -1/+23I don't do engineering, but it looked like a rechargeable battery, stuck to a dynamo?, connected via bicycle chains to bicycle pedals and some large MDF propeller things?
This is the Dailymail, they get impressed seeing a potato produce electricity to light up an LED. - shig, on 08/21/2008, -5/+21"It produces an output of 11.3 watts.. the nearest alternative wind turbine on the market costs £2,000."
I can get an AirX 400w for about $500 or £250. That's with a 3yr warranty, carbon fiber blades, internal alternator, internal battery charge regulator, and the simplicity of two moving parts. Just add at least 25amps of battery.
Here's an energy tip; stop making wind turbines out of platinum, silly Brits. - draculthemad, on 08/21/2008, -3/+18Um, just how readily available are scrapyards with electrical parts in the third world?
I mean, the article says "an old bike frame and wheel bearings, the magneto from a Vespa, a battery from a Ford Fiesta and bits of wood. "
But wasn't there an article the other day that said a *bike* could be a life-altering tool when your only prospects for work had to be within walking distance of your family? - Caled85, on 08/21/2008, -3/+16this is great so don't misunderstand my following rant, he did not invent this, he designed it, Edison invented the dc motor (although this is a contested), and i have no idea who invented bike sprockets nor do i know who first used flat blades as wings or airfoils. he built something that wheal cool is not complicated, i built a similar thing for a 6th grade science fair, it's not hard, AT ALL
- jamesdew, on 08/21/2008, -0/+13I am rather confused by this sentence
It produces an output of 11.3 watts, which is enough electricity to run lighting for 63 hours or a radio for 30 hours.
11.3 watts can "run lighting for 63 hours". I don't get how that makes any sense, if it is running an 11 watt bulb and the wind never stops it should be able to power a bulb forever. Maybe the battery can hold enough charge to power a light bulb for 63 hours but that has nothing to do with the turbine outputting 11.3 watts. - bryano, on 08/21/2008, -3/+15This'll work great, because they have so many of those leftover car batteries in the developing world. Besides, you can't mass produce goods that are made from scrap easily. That said, if he can come up with a product that you can mass produce at low cost, he'll strike gold.
- inactive, on 08/21/2008, -1/+12Invents? Bull. Just cobbled one together. That is NOT inventing. We did stuff like this
in the 1960's. Remember skate boards? lol - FulcrumVitesse, on 08/21/2008, -0/+10The idea is fine, but most of these parts would be impossible to source in most third world nations. A functioning car battery, a bike, a dynamo - all these things are used until they fall apart in all African countries, at least.
- punwin, on 08/21/2008, -0/+8I too am jumping on the want-to-build bandwagon
- shig, on 08/21/2008, -0/+8Use any low amperage alternator from a junk vehicle. The lower the amps, the lower the wind speed needed to produce electricity, generally.
- mkpaa, on 08/21/2008, -1/+9More I think of the generator concept the cooler it sounds. Imagine a touring cyclists setting up a windmill near campsite to generate electricity while raising tent. :)
Combining a hub generator and a hub dynamo you can recharge all possible gadgets from notebook to bike lights wherever you go. This would be far better than for example http://www.hymini.com concept. Remaining problems are where to actually store the electricity and what kind of (portable!) bike stand to use with hub generator. Maybe batteries could be stored inside bike's frame and fork tubes. - abigsmurf, on 08/21/2008, -0/+7"His turbine works by converting the energy in wind into electrical energy stored in a battery. It produces an output of 11.3 watts, which is enough electricity to run lighting for 63 hours or a radio for 30 hours."
... Where the hell are they getting these figures from? A lightbulb (~20W for an energy efficient one) uses more power than a radio (~3W depending on the speakers). Watt also has no time element, you cannot use it to say how long a device can run for?
And of course the 'easily available parts' He's pretty much ripping out the power generation parts of two different vehicles and claiming he's invented a generator. Unsurprisingly in ultra poor countries, there's not an abundance of disused cars to rip the parts out of (and they're incredibly heavy to ship). He's also gone down to the scrapyard to get these things, has he seen how much you pay from a garage to get these?
You'd be better off sending them a couple of small, cheap solar panels which will offer around 20W of output, be cheap to ship and be more robust. - mkpaa, on 08/20/2008, -2/+9Very cool concept. With little modification a generator built in the hub could be put in any real bike. Most bike electricity projects have outside generator or use dynamos.
I think it's in Germany where electric companies have to buy locally generated electricity at market price. Those could eventually be very useful. :) - aladrin, on 08/21/2008, -0/+6If 'cobbling together' produces a new type of product, then it's invention. You are correct in this case, though. He didn't 'invent' anything, he merely found a different way to do the same thing.
As for 'p20'... Well, it only cost that if you have the scraps. If he's missing any of the pieces, he'd have to buy those to make it. I'm really sick of the 'make X for $0!' crap on the web that requires you destroy $500 worth of other items to do it. - MrFurious2k, on 08/21/2008, -0/+5This is why reporters are often amazed by potato batteries. They have no idea what they're talking about.
- fmoliveira, on 08/21/2008, -0/+5That car battery alone is more than 20 bucks in my part of the developing world.
- MrFurious2k, on 08/21/2008, -0/+5Not to throw a damper on this, but we're talking about 11.3 Watts. I applaud his effort, but this is really hard to get excited about.
- OneLess, on 08/21/2008, -0/+4Not really surprising that the Daily Mail's science and tech writers don't know anything about, you know, science and tech.
- nokkloom, on 08/21/2008, -0/+4William Kamkwamba actually built one a while ago IN a developing country :P
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/william_kamkwam ... - blqysmg, on 08/21/2008, -0/+4Even in the third world, there are cities. Where there are cities, people throw away things when they are broken. Lots of bicycles, appliances with wires, old vehicles (scooters, small motorcycles, small cars, lawn mowers, etc.)
BTW, a typical treadmill has a fairly powerful motor in it that can be used as a generator. They range from 750 watts to 2000 watts as a motor. Used as a generator, the potential energy they can create is limited more by the size of the airfoils and the average wind speed, but it would be reasonable to expect 250 to 500 watts generated by a decent breeze. I'll bet there are plenty of those lying around in scrapyards that can be salvaged for rural windmill use. - blqysmg, on 08/21/2008, -1/+5I don't think he's going for gold. I think he's going for making the lives of the desperately poor better. He doesn't need to mass produce them, he just needs to work out a good set of plans that are simple to follow (picture-books, etc.) and distribute THOSE for free.
Maybe enterprising aid-organizations can collect bicycle parts, magnetos wiring and good batteries to build kits. Those kits could be distributed to very poor areas, where the locals can assemble them, build masts to mount them, and have instant power stations. - sanman, on 08/21/2008, -0/+3it's no Arc-Reactor, tho
- t4stringer, on 08/20/2008, -5/+8Smart kid
- blqysmg, on 08/21/2008, -0/+3I don't know why shig was dugg down for his comment. While I applaud the young man for designing and building a windmill out of second hand scrap, the article was factually wrong about the cost of wind power; very wrong.
At 20 Pounds for 11.3 watts, the homemade version only puts out 0.565 watts per Pound. The commercial version is three times more efficient. Of course, a family in a developing world may not be able to afford the commercial version. Still, as a proof of concept scrap parts build, it's brilliant. Scaling it up to at least 100 watts would be easy to do, and should provide a usable power source. 11.3 watts is just too tiny to be anything but a toy. - SSUK, on 08/21/2008, -1/+4Student loans
- NJank, on 08/21/2008, -1/+4MacGyver > Tony Stark
- repins, on 08/21/2008, -0/+3plans to build wind turbines from car parts have been around for decades, this guy has done nothing new.
- mechfluff, on 08/21/2008, -1/+4That does look like it would be fun to build. Not much wind where I live, though.
- Namli, on 08/21/2008, -4/+7Inventions like these could make a real change. The world needs more people like Max.
- MrMysterious, on 08/21/2008, -0/+3So does this mean we should ship all of our old junk, including hazardous material (battery) to 3rd world countries?
- skiddles, on 08/21/2008, -0/+2While I don't know about the German situation, but in the US that varies by state, and many states do not require companies to pay even close to market rate.
So in some areas like mine, there is no benefit to net metering. - inactive, on 08/21/2008, -2/+4Unlimited Power Via Nuclear will do more to help the poor than this utter nonesense. It is a good idea but flawed in its potential usage. Why limit the 3rd world to scraps...why not give then the full potential of near unlimited power? I guess keeping the 3rd world down is the way to go, huh?
- dsmx, on 08/21/2008, -2/+4Pfft McGyver could of built the same thing from a paper clip a drawing pin and some paper.
- cam0man, on 08/21/2008, -0/+2also as a note...you can't use MDF outside anyways. As soon as water hits it, the entire thing will melt away into a pile of funky chunked up sawdust. Plastic FTW instead....
- bashnu, on 08/21/2008, -0/+2I sent a container worth of bicycles from holland to senegal, where they would be converted to water pumps for the wells.
Idea was great. Until they started breaking,
There where no replacement parts in those remote regions.
A western skip contains gold. A third world skip contains garbage.
Build it from local materials so they can be easily repaired - eg. car parts. (bicycles are quite decadent in 3rd world) - honkerdown, on 08/21/2008, -0/+2The U.S. has a requirement that utilities must make available "Net Metering", which is basically what you are talking about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_metering - DrJG, on 08/22/2008, -0/+2Max Robson deserves better than these comments, he deserves a pat on the back and some thanks from poor of the world. Most of the comments above are missing a key point - this was done not for profit of a western multinational selling to the poor people of poor nations,or for that matter for richer nations citizens to copy to sell or use (which they are free to do depending on them and their laws), but chiefly for self help for the poor people of poor nations, who can build such things from scrap of various sorts, if given the idea and a push to the idea; bicycles and used car batteries are not difficult to come by but the point is to use what scraps are around, and it is also another neat way to use them. The fact that this might not be nobel prize material for science is not relevant here - though he might deserve it for initiative of heart and using his mind instead of just a small donation or free words - nor is the fact that lot of other people have done it or are capable of doing it. When you need food desperately it cannot help you if a chef in Paris has invented something or not, it can only help if someone has the heart to cook for you or offer you what they can. And before you come back with how you can buy, that would be a poor response to a simily.
Stop being nasty and jealous, of a deserving young boy, or anyone deserving. - blqysmg, on 08/21/2008, -0/+2I just looked up solar panels. I found a 12 watt solar panel (12 volt charging circuit, approx 1 amp delivery) for $139.00 US. I'm not sure how much solar power you could buy for $40, but I'll bet it's not much.
Still, 11.3 watts, continuous, is not much power. If he used a 7 watt bulb (modern, CFL, 40 watt equiv.) he could light the bulb for just less than twice as long as he was able to generate the power. Four hours of solid wind would give him about 7 hours of light. Not bad, really, considering. Six decent hours of wind should handle a couple of lights and a radio for the evening.
If he had a better generator and bigger (and more aerodynamic) foils, he'd be able to provide for a couple more lights, a fan, and maybe a fridge. That would make a huge difference in the lives of people with no electricity to start with. - TurdZilla, on 08/21/2008, -0/+2I understand where you are coming from with that but..... I think its nice to put stuff like that out there.... I have see some of this stuff don't in 3rd world countries before on slashdot. While we are waiting on Nuclear someone in the back woods could slap 2 sticks together and bam.... Free electricity...
- RedRummy, on 08/21/2008, -0/+2they still make Vespas (in Europe)....
- MrFurious2k, on 08/21/2008, -0/+2I think that's the major problem with any high energy output power plant in 3rd world nations. A lot of them are using Iron transmission lines which can't handle the current.
Wind farms (especially with 11.3 watt generators) seems even more far fetched though. - BassHead, on 08/21/2008, -0/+1It seem you also have a problem with your understanding of the world chav :o), but I assume you want to translate from British-English to American-English?
A skip is like a dumpster, but without a lid and a tip is a landfill site, though it's use is less common now. The fountain of knowledge that is Wikipedia has articles on both ;-) - AndrewDB, on 08/21/2008, -1/+2No, but it will blend wind into power.
- 70percent, on 08/21/2008, -0/+1http://www.instructables.com/id/EAC0PU349IEP287OH1 ...
- anteyekon4myst, on 08/21/2008, -0/+1In an effort to show how environmentally friendly they are Energy companies in the third world have decided to clean up all scrap yards and keep them under lock.
- winmywii, on 08/21/2008, -3/+4Where does a 22 year old come up with $50,000?
- MrFurious2k, on 08/21/2008, -0/+1The "money" in something refers to the profit someone can make in something. You might be right, there may not be any profit in a $20 turbine but that would be because customers wouldn't spend that much based on the tiny amount of power it generates. If a company could get people to buy it at $25 while only spending $20 in distributing it (end point sale), I'm sure you'd find some mega-corps selling them. First you'd have to convince people it was a decent investment.
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