I have access to this decorative windmill. It’s been in place for decades, spins freely in the wind, and has made millions of revolutions in its lifetime. Its RPM’s are impressive even in relatively low wind.
What are your thoughts on how I should harness this energy?
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You’re not going to be able to generate much power from that.
Do you have a bike with a dynamo powered light somewhere? You could try hooking that up somehow.
And bike around the neighbourhood playing Snap! - Power.
I’ve got a power! 🎵✨🤭
You can’t realistically do it. Even is you find a tiny enough generator the amount of power would be so small it would barely light a led in a high wind.
Try turning a bike generator by hand, it takes a lot to generate a little power.
Search on diy wind turbine and start from scratch.
https://www.rwu.edu/news/news-archive/how-build-your-own-wind-turbine
Counterpoint: even lighting an LED with a tiny working windmill is pretty neat.
Counter counter point: It is neat, IF it works.
Or you can do what my neighbors did and just buy one.
Tried to find a link to the wind powered lawn ornament but couldn’t. You will have to satisfy your windy lust with this.
https://campingguider.com/portable-wind-turbine-for-camping/
As long as we’re all clear that that’s the only thing OP can expect, sure. If OP is wondering how much they can knock off their energy bill with this project, the answer is jack shit.
Agreed. The “impressive RPM” mentioned in the OP won’t matter, because it’s about angular momentum, not specifically angular frequency. You would certainly be putting in more energy than you’d conceivably get out. At best this would be a “fun learning experience in your garage” project.
I agree that RPM isn’t the primary quality to assess here, but I think angular momentum doesn’t really matter either. As a quantity, momentum describes a conserved capacity to store kinetic energy. As in, it could tell us how long the fan would stay in motion when the wind stops blowing. But that’s not the objective for a wind turbine, which is supposed to draw energy from the wind to do some work.
At bottom, none of these quantities are the useful metric for what makes a good wind turbine. And that’s expected, because we have few details about the fan itself: the blade pitch, stall speed, and fan diameter. The only firm detail we can see is the blade count from the picture.
I believe you’re thinking of momentum in a narrow sense: the energy an already-moving object has that allows it to move for a while before stopping. And it was meant in a more general sense ie the amount of energy being generated and doing work.
N… No? The wind applies a torque to the wind turbine that gets converted into angular momentum. The angular momentum drives a generator that produces electricity. That’s literally the entire point of a wind turbine.
The obvious point I was making was that the electricity produced doesn’t rely just on ω but also the moment of inertia I.
I feel like I’m being gaslit right now. Like: “Linear momentum isn’t the useful metric in assessing how deadly a collision with this car would be. I feel like that’s expected because we have few details about the car itself.” ???
Here is a tutorial video
I think that mechanical generator could be hook to it as it
Beat me by 2 hours, 59 minutes and 45 seconds!
Like maybe you can create heat? That could like boil water (or rather som fluid that boils easy under pressure in some closed loop). Then drive the dynamo off that. Im no scientist so i just make shit up, but often steam is part of smart shit
It’s already turning, that is what the steam is used for, so that will go from kinetic energy - heat energy - kinetic energy - electric energy, instead of directly going kinetic - electric; you are losing efficiency at every conversion step. If you already have something moving, using it directly with a motor is the way to go.
Ok - so just attach the dynamo then.
Fucking magnets!!! How do they work???
Probably need to increase the size of the base, the length of the pole, and the area covered by the blades.
After that, strap on a dynamo and find a battery to capture the energy. Probably need a transformer to regulate how much power you’re putting in and taking out, so you have a steady AC flow that doesn’t wear out or blow up any of the parts.
https://windturbinehome.com/news/how-to-build-1000w-wind-turbine-at-home
Simple answer: making it do meaningful work will make it harder to rotate (kind of like increasing the setting on a stationary bike) and something this size won’t be enough to power anything useful.
Maybe one of those solar garden lights? But those already run fine on solar.
I’d say leave it and enjoy the free spins in the wind, those are more valuable than the tiny bit of energy this can give you.
Replace the base with a solar panel. You won’t get any meaningful power out of that tiny blade setup from wind.
Start over from scratch
Been looking for a preassembled working one and found this at home depot, $195.39. I am more thab a little surprised.
