Solar Power Dynamo Generator Idea/Design

It wouldn't work..

See: Electronics 101 and Physics 101.

Reading this post somehow reminded me of the Mythbusters episode where they busted a lot perpetual motion machines ;)
Not that it wouldn't work at all, but it is highly inefficient in it's current setup. You are better off just hooking up your PV panel straight to the battery.

The problem with perpetual motion as it stands is the idea that it doesn't need something to get it going. However, faux-perpetual machine devices do exist, however, you cannot get power from it. Think of it as a feedback loop, it passes the same amount of energy back and forth. It doesn't produce, nor does it discharge, any energy. 100% efficient, and also 100% ineffective as a source of power.

Something that comes to mind is one of those spinning magnet things you see on people's desks. They spin and spin and spin, until you stop it. Then it spins no more, until you provide it with that initial spin.

:roll:

i do have another design that is a bit more unique....

component list;
-PV solar panel
-cylinder shaped permanent magnet
-hula hoop made out of aluminum (preferably with a slightly larger radius then the permanent magnet)
-insulated copper wire
-mini telsa coil or transformer

essentially I want to put a permanent magnet in a hula hoop made of aluminum then coil wrap copper wire around the hoop. the solar panel would energize the wire. im wondering what would happen to the permanent magnet inside the hoop? would the permanent magnet be pushed and pulled around inside the hoop in a linear mag lev drive type fashion? or would it just stick to the side of the hoop and not move at all? what would happen if you could reverse the polarity of the current flow at some specific frequency? essentially i want to nudge the permanent magnet around the hoop faster and faster each revolution. I want to get it to a crazy fast velocity inside the hoop with a relatively low amperage/voltage -- only that which is feed to the system by the solar panel. assuming the magnet moves at all...

then i want to put the hoop on a rig and place a mini tesla coil or mini transformer in the center of the hoop. connect the solar panel hit the switch and observe what happens....

would the magnet zipping around inside the hoop generate any electricity? and if so would the mini tesla coil or transformer be able to pick it up and send it out?

of course the visualization I was thinking about was a bit more complex.....

I want to seal the hoop and the mini tesla coil (or transformer) inside a thick glass sphere/globe that is a vacuum. at first the rigging of the hoop will be set to the equator. but i would also like to experiment with rotating the hoop by means of a 24 volt battery from a horizontal orientation (equator) to a vertical orientation (prime meridian) at a specific speed so the magnet essentially draws a vortex around the inside of the sphere going up and down.

i wondering how much power i could get out of such a device or weather such a device would even work at all....

if the device works but just needs more power output you could experiment with;
-adding another permanent magnet into the hoop
-experiment with rotating a magnetic fluid or gas around inside the hoop?
-have multiple hoops with slightly different radii rotating inside the globe?
-instead of the globe being a complete vacuum fill it with some kind of gas...

thoughts?

"cubytes" wrote:
thoughts?

You're proposing a type of flywheel, but it won't work. Your design relies on driving a magnet through a hollow circular tube at tremendous speed. Even if we ignore all of the issues with that design, not the least of which is the friction that the magnet would incur as it ricochets off the walls of the tube, what you fail to realize is that a moving mass really doesn't have a lot of energy.

We measure energy in Joules, and the energy of a moving mass is called "kinetic energy". The kinetic energy of a mass is determined by the following equation for a point-mass traveling in a straight line. (For the purpose of discussion, your loop can be thought of as an infinitely long straight track, and the mass can be considered to be a point-mass.)

E = 0.5*m*v*v; Kinetic energy (E) equals one-half mass (m) times velocity (v) squared. Mass is measured in kilograms and Velocity is measured in meters per second.

Power is measured in Watts, and it is defined as the amount of energy that is used per second (1 Watt = 1 Joule per second) to do work.

P = E / t; Power (P) equals energy (E) divided by time (t).

The average American home uses somewhere around 11000 Watts of power per day. If you plug 11000 Watts and 86400 seconds (number of seconds in a day) and solve that for energy, then you'll see that a home requires the generation of about 950 Million Joules of energy per day.

Even if you make your magnet very large, let's say 1KG, and drive it very fast, say at 1000 miles per hour (447.04 meters per second) around the loop, then it will still only have enough kinetic energy to light a 60 Watt lightbulb for about 30 minutes.

We can see that by using the first equation to solve for the amount of kinetic energy that is stored by the moving magnet.

E = 0.5 * 1 * 447.04 * 447.04 = 99922.3808 Joules

Then you can solve for time in the second equation, which tells you how much time that this amount of energy will last if it is being used at the rate of 60 Watts.

t = E / P = 99922.3808 / 60 = 1665.37301333 seconds = 27.7562168888 minutes

So, you can see that this isn't a lot of energy. You need about 1000 times more energy than this to power a house.


It is ridiculously hard to convert kinetic energy into electrical energy, and vice versa. This is one reason why hydro-electric power plants that convert the kinetic energy of falling water into electricity are among the most massive man-made structures on Earth. And it's also one reason why we use chemical storage mediums (chemical batteries) for almost every type of mobile electrical appliance. Your phone has a chemical batter. Your computer has a chemical battery. Your car has a chemical battery and is even powered entirely by chemical processes. Flywheels certainly have a place as well. Many companies have developed flywheel storage systems for vehicles and buildings. NASA has been developing flywheel storage systems for spacecraft and other applications for years. But flywheels are probably most often used in regenerative breaking systems for cars, trucks, and buses, since it's relatively easy to convert the kinetic energy of the vehicle into the kinetic energy of the flywheel, and back again.

You can read more about the difficulties, disadvantages, and advantages of flywheel energy storage in this Wikipedia article.

"DeadlyJoe" wrote:
You're proposing a type of flywheel, but it won't work. Your design relies on driving a magnet through a hollow circular tube at tremendous speed. Even if we ignore all of the issues with that design, not the least of which is the friction that the magnet would incur as it ricochets off the walls of the tube, what you fail to realize is that a moving mass really doesn't have a lot of energy.

you really think the permanent magnet would actually move around inside the hoop when the coil wrapped wires are energized?

essentially what im trying to do is take linear maglev technology and contain it in a loop sealed in a vacuum and exploit some resonant nudge frequency to propel the object to very high velocities with relatively little energy by comparison.

im not worried about the mass to energy per say nor am i interested in the kinetic energy im only interested in producing electricity not interested in mechanical energy. my understanding of generating electricity is that all you have to do is move and/or rotate a magnetic object in an magnetic field and somehow that magically generates electricity. so therefore im trying to design a system that can move a magnet in a magnetic field at extremely high velocities with very little input energy....thinking that would in turn produce a lot of output electrical energy once the system gets going and going and going constantly being nudged towards the speed of light when in operation.

what worries me the most is that assuming i can get the magnet flying around at extremely high velocities without any friction within the hoop and assuming i get it to the speed of light (several years after operation) what happens when you shake the system? or perhaps there is an earthquake? catastrophic failure? unless there is some dampening system...

but again im just thinking out loud.....

"DeadlyJoe" wrote:
You can read more about the difficulties, disadvantages, and advantages of flywheel energy storage in this Wikipedia article.

whoa actually that is a much better design...

btw thanks for sharing that article about a flywheel :)

thanks for sharing those equations too. 98million Joules huh? good insight about kinetic energy being hard to convert into electrical energy.

ok i got this....

genetically modified algae then?