If you carry 5 gallon buckets of gas and dump them into your tank, you get a really good feel for how much gas you really burn. I did that for a couple of years when I drove a tanker semi during the gas crisis. Well, even though the gas was free, it was a real eye opener. Even more so for hand cranking out electricity. If you have 5 kids, you might get to watch a 21 inch color TV in the dark. If they watched all the Schwartzenegger movies, they'd start to resemble the star. That's how he got his muscles...remember Conan the Destroyer at the turn stile? Well, he was powering the movie cameras. The stage lighting was all kerosene...it used to be brighter than it is today. Watch any old Western for the proof. ;-) Oops, wrong era...try pitch torches. Depending on where you live, the local street gang or baseball team will be drying your clothes. [maybe both sides...er...both sides of the team, or one side of your clothes?] A one meter square solar panel could probably wrestle me to the ground. I don't think I'm a 100 watt person, at least, not for very long.
Comparativly, making CS is extremely low energy. ken At 06:17 AM 12/13/01 +0600, you wrote: >Ken, >There is so much room in our world for appropriate technology and you >are taking this thread in a fascinsting direction. Another highly >simple solution that ocurrs to me is to actually peddle the bicycle that >goes along with the generator, since not everybody has the wind to >operate a windmill. If one attachs the bike chain to a flywheel, >placing the generator on the other side of this, then a 12 volt car >battery can be charged. This car battery has many options for what it >can power, including fluorescent lights, a CS generator, etc. and so >forth. The benefit of getting the heart pumping on the bike may be >among the best of all. >Reid > >Ode Coyote wrote, > An alternator requires an outside source of power for the field >windings >[a battery]. My bike gen [25+ yrs old] uses no battery and has perm >magnets to supply the field. [magneto?] Outputs a DC signal. The faster >you >pedal, the brighter the light. No pedaling..no light. > Maybe this has changed in modern times. > > One cool thing to try is to use a bike generator attached to the same >rotational force as an alternator to supply the field current for a >larger >alternator on a wind mill so when the windmill isn't getting much wind, >the >field voltage drops and the alternator outputs less power. If the wind >isn't blowing at all, there's no drain on a battery supplying field >current >to an alternator that isn't spinning. When the wind picks up, the field > >increases, the alternator provides more resistance while generating more > >power, acting like a governer. > A zener diode [from an old Brit motorcycle] in the battery case does >voltage regulation and helps keep batteries warm. >Ken > > > > >-- >The silver-list is a moderated forum for discussion of colloidal silver. > >To join or quit silver-list or silver-digest send an e-mail message to: >silver-list-requ...@eskimo.com -or- silver-digest-requ...@eskimo.com >with the word subscribe or unsubscribe in the SUBJECT line. > >To post, address your message to: silver-list@eskimo.com >Silver-list archive: http://escribe.com/health/thesilverlist/index.html >List maintainer: Mike Devour <mdev...@eskimo.com> > >
