21 ms·
Turning an old car into a powerful generator
- hammock 3y agoIs this safe? It's a cool idea and I'd appreciate even the slightest discussion of potential risks of the motor coming apart, or whatever else failure mode (I don't know)
- dghlsakjg 3y agoAbout as safe as any other use of a motor. Moving parts like belts and fans are potentially a problem. The engine won't come apart in a dangerous way. It might overheat, which creates superheated water in the cooling system, which is designed to handle that. Although I sort of doubt it since they are basically using about 1/20th of its maximum power output. The most dangerous thing about this is likely the standard risks of any generator, fuel and electricity.
- deepspace 3y agoHell, no, it is not safe. That box of Arduino madness is going to fail sooner rather than later, and destroy the motor, the person's house wiring or both.
- nikau 3y agonot sure how its going to destroy the motor, and most it can fail and set the equivalent to the accelerator being foot to the floor, at that point the engine will just bounce off the ECU governed rev limiter until he turns the engine off.
- KennyBlanken 3y agoIf there's no system to shut down the engine on overheating of coolant or oil, you're definitely looking at a fire hazard. The bigger issue is the terrible efficiency; alternators are about 50% efficient, whereas proper mechanical generators are 90%+. The better solution would be to buy a "generator head" and connect it to the engine...but by the time you get done making a frame to hold the generator, engine, fuel tank, radiator, expansion tank, etc - as well as the necessary safety systems - you might as well just have bought an used generator.
- husamia 3y agoreinventing hybrid electric cars
- Temporary_31337 3y ago60.73 is not great
- bob1029 3y agoFor 99.9999% of applications it won't matter. If you are powering your home with a Toyota minivan, I don't think you are concerned with grid sync or accurate time keeping.
- sgt 3y ago60.73 roentgen? Not great, not terrible.
- r2_pilot 3y ago60.73 is the frequency in hertz from the picture in the article.
- postexitus 3y agoIt's a Chernobyl reference.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ivix 3y agoThey gave them the propaganda number.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- xattt 3y agoHow is the “school bus on front lawn” aesthetic avoided?
- brocha 3y agoEasy! Keep it in the backyard
- justinclift 3y agoMight need to be careful about doing that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAjAySmuvz0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAjAySmuvz0
- mindslight 3y agoMore unaccountable nonsense "technocratic" fake job bullshit. Get mandated rent from the boring beige-loving 90%, dump the 10% that somehow stick out. Also, that backyard looks like the least cluttered part of that neighborhood. I can't imagine being so scared of living in a multi story building that I'd do that to myself.
- bombcar 3y agoBury the schoolbus as a fallout shelter!
- costanzaDynasty 3y agoThe main problem I see here is that everyone I've known with spare old cars littering their property seem to always be missing the engine.
- doubled112 3y agoIn people’s yards, this is often the case. There must be 1000s of cars in scrap yards, though, with perfectly functional engines and front ends. Both my wife and myself have had a car written off after being rear ended. It is a common story.
- cjrp 3y agoIf they're in a scrap yard they're most likely being parted-out, so the engine will be bought and put in another car.
- bluGill 3y agoThe engine is for sale if you want to buy it. Most engine will last longer than the car if you take care of it. Back in the 1950s engines were a lot more likely to fail and so people would keep an old car running by buying a junkyard engine. Now that isn't very popular (it still happens, but it isn't popular)
- doubled112 3y agoI think this is what I was trying to point out. Engines are everywhere. Winter and road salt ends way more vehicle lives than engine failure where I live. My 2011 Ford Focus, for example, is slowly returning to nature. I can find dozens of them with engines in great shape, but also with body problems. Body work is incredibly expensive.
- jandrese 3y agoYeah, if frame rot doesn't kill the vehicle (maybe you don't live in the rust belt for instance), then it's usually the transmission that sends the car to the chopper. Engines tend to outlast the rest of the car as long as the owner keeps up with basic maintenance. Plus, when things break on the engine they're usually fixable short of blowing a crank through the side of the block or something catastrophic like that. A body that is rotting out is hopeless, nobody is even going to try to fix it. Where you'll have a lot more trouble is finding a large generator to bolt onto that engine. Those are far more rare. As many people have pointed out, sticking a little 5kW generator on the side of a full size car engine is a hilarious mismatch that's going to burn way more fuel than necessary. Sure it's a fun project, but quite impractical. Harbor Freight actually sells the appropriate replacement engine for $180, that van is worth more in scrap value than that. Plus it takes forever to stabilize the frequency so it's not even as good as the standard setup. Maybe the best use for this would be some Mad Max style post apocalypse where most all technology has been lost, but gasoline is abundant and apparently free so people spend their time making heavy metal looking art cars and sports equipment.
- gabereiser 3y agoThis is awesome. I lived on a sailboat for a while and sometimes you get cloudy weather for days, blocking your ability to use solar to top up your batteries. The small M35 universal diesel engine I had had one thing going for it, it had a lot of torque. Torque I use to turn a 110V 120A alternator. The alternator (like a car’s) charges the battery, except in my case it was charging a lot of battery. 6 12V 200AH Lithium Iron batteries. These batteries ran all the “home” appliances for several days before needing a recharge. 120V 3000W inverter, A/C, Fridge, coffee maker, water maker, electric stovetop, lights, navigation, radio, Starlink, Xbox. If having a vehicle is unsightly, you can remove the engine onto a stand and wire it up exactly as described in this video. The only thing you’d need to run an engine is a fuel line, a spark, and compression.
- doubled112 3y agoIf you go diesel, you remove the need for spark, but perhaps starting is a greater challenge.
- bluGill 3y agoYou also need a cooling system to run nearly all engines. Generally a car engine doesn't have enough cooling system to run at max power for very long (it is only a few seconds between the light turning green and you being at speed, then you need much less power). Your sailboat as the nearly infinite ocean to cool itself with. Most likely your engine also needs a computer, which implies an electrical system.
- rcostin2k2 3y agoLiving on a sailboat, the cool water would not be a problem. Just some filters to avoid clogging the cooling ducts.
- mschuster91 3y ago> Most likely your engine also needs a computer, which implies an electrical system. Old diesel clunkers not really, at least if you don't care about emissions control. Fuel injection / exhaust valve control is purely mechanical, all they need electricity for is the engine starter and, depending on age, the cooling fan. Modern engines, on the other hand, these can be really hard to run on their own outside of a car, at least from hearsay - I only have had experience with an 1994 VW T4 van.
- blibble 3y agoare cars designed to be left stationary with the engine running for long periods of time?
- intrasight 3y agoNo - but used this way it's no longer a car.
- alistairSH 3y agoNope, you’d need to find a way to cool the engine. A car has a water pump that moves water through the engine and to a radiator. The cars motion moves air across the radiator. Most cars have an electric fan so they can run at idle, but they aren’t designed to idle indefinitely. Police cars in the US often have (or at least had) beefed up cooling system to allow them to run at idle.
- yetihehe 3y agoCars during tests on dynamometer have to have a big fan blowing constantly on radiator. If you provide a big enough fan, you can run it as long as you want, even with big load. I was once doing 140km/h on autobahn uphill with fully loaded passenger car with additional fully loaded roof trailer. The car managed half an hour of fully open throttle without any problems, but If your home needs to use 40kW for more than a hour, maybe investing in proper generator is a better solution. In typical applications, engine will not be running at full power.
- bluGill 3y agoEngines are designed and built for cars, but there is a secondary market for stationary engines for various other applications. None of them are large enough markets to design their own engine (even all together), but they are large enough market that if you have already are designing an engine it is worth making a few changes to better serve other markets. If you buy direct from the manufacture they probably have a custom computer code for generator use. This includes a pin, to select between 50 and 60 hz. If you are buying for a different use you won't get that pin, but might get some other controls not needed on a car (you will have to pay for custom programming of course). You have to check with your manufacture rep to see details - some companies are more interested in this business than others.
- bluGill 3y agoIf you want to do this, you should put a gear box between the engine and generator. Sure your car engine can run at 3600 rpm (I've seen exceptions, but they are rare), but typically it is most fuel efficient when run at closer to 2000 rpm at high load. At lower loads lower RPM is more efficient (but not as efficient as high load at 2000 rpm) - but your car probably doesn't have a large enough cooling system to handle high loads for very long, so perhaps run the engine at 1800 rpm and use a 1:2 gear box to get the right rpm for the generator, which makes design simple and is "close enough" to ideal without needing to see the exact efficient/power/rpm curves of your particular engine (a 3d graph).
- lloeki 3y agoCar gearboxes are a spectacular cause of power loss (in the order of 20% IIRC), so probably better to come up with a simple gear reduction or a belt-driven pulley system.
- dylan604 3y agoThey didn't say use the car's transmission. The suggestion of a 2:1 gear reduction could easily be a simple gear reduction or a belt-driven pulley. You've tried to inject something on your own accord for possibly a misunderstanding??
- cduzz 3y agoYeah, they didn't mention many specifics; I also imagine that they're just pulling the power off the engine using the accessory belt connected to their existing alternator -> inverter setup. Similarly -- the concerns about how to cool the device if it s putting down 100hp -- that's 74570 watts; it's unlikely they're using a harbor freight generator's alternator to generate that kind of power.
- lloeki 3y agoI read "gearbox" as, well, an automotive gearbox, which would hardly be surprising in the context of the article. 2:1 could easily mean crank the gearbox into a gear that approximately produces that ratio. > You've tried to inject something on your own accord for possibly a misunderstanding?? WTH is that supposed to mean? If I misunderstood anything it was a honest mistake. GP suggested a RPM reduction for fuel efficiency reasons, it would be counterproductive to offset that efficiency gain with a high-loss mechanical device. There was neither ill intent nor hidden agenda.
- alistairSH 3y ago3600rpm is pretty high. This thing must suck gas. You’d want to do some math to figure out if this approach was actually saving any money over a proper consumer generator. Reliabilty would also be a concern. Not the engine itself, but the integration of parts by the user.
- giantg2 3y agoDepends on the situation. Very occasional use and already having the engine is probably fine. If you have to buy an engine, or use it often, then the math is more important.
- stonedautist 3y agolooking at the video and his responses to comments, buddy is a machine-recycling nut just using this to give himself a mobile welder on his acreage or whatever. he definitely knows it's a mad-max-by-way-of-something-awful "look what I made out of shit I had lying around" solution to a thoroughly solved problem. it's conceptually cool but it's a weird narrow use case and it's not an objectively good idea. you could address cooling by using a motor with a big clutch fan and a well-shrouded rad, and you would probably be better off using the engine's idle control system to manage this at lower RPM to save gas, but it'd still be lipstick on a pig and you could go to harbour freight and buy a prettier pig.
- gambiting 3y agoWhy would the high RPM necessarily mean using a lot of fuel? I've had a little VW Polo 1.0L that used to sit at 4000rpm just to go 70mph on the motorway, and it still returned like 50 imperial mpg(~6L/100km).
- alistairSH 3y agoMost Toyota Siennas were delivered with a 3.5L V6. The earliest models had a 3.0L. And they usually have an idle RPM around 700-800rpm.
- rightbyte 3y agoEssentially you want the motor to makes as few turns as possible for the same power output. At some low rpm the burn cycle gets bad though. Depends on motor. Fuel effeniency charts need constant power lines to be useful or they fool people.
- quickthrower2 3y agoHow do you make this safe, electrically? In terms of earthing, circuit breaking, etc.?
- bluGill 3y agohopefully you reuse the circuit breaker from the original and so are fine. If you are running your house use a proper line/generator selector, and then your house grounds take care of earthing. If you are running tools outdoors on a cord you don't want an earth, just make sure all your cords are in good shape. With no earth connection if you touch a live wire you won't get a shock as there is no circuit. Although this is safer for temporary use you can't do it for indoor/permanent use because you can't insect the wires in your walls to ensure they are in good shape, and so you can get a lot of failure modes that running good cords prevents, and earth protects against those.
- matt-attack 3y agoI suspect there can be much improvement in his rudimentary "control" algorithm. A simple PID controller could react much faster and zero in on the right throttle position in response to a varying load. It was a bit painful watching that controller creep along.
- kortex 3y agoYep. Also the main loop should cycle as fast as possible, and only execute the control loop as needed. Or really use a timer interrupt.
- deepspace 3y agoAlso, look into controlling the ECU directly instead of futzing around with mechanically controlling the cruise control (yuk). And this really, really needs a proper RTOS and "software written by someone more professional than someone who tinkers with Arduinos", since malfunctioning software can destroy the engine and/or burn your house down. For the same reason, it requires a proper PCB, not some yanky box of protoboard and wires.
- ska 3y agoYou don't really need an RTOS to do something like this safely, but agree you need more firmware knowledge than "tinkers with Arduinos" to stay clear of possible unfortunate failure modes. You definitely need to build in some interlocks and/or other sanity checking. Similar with the PCB's, many of the better dev boards are pretty decent, the problem comes with poor connections designed for easy access, etc. This can be resolved without spinning a new board though, or perhaps designing a simple extender.
- savrajsingh 3y agoArduino is single threaded on bare metal — you don’t need RTOS in this case, afaict
- jensenbox 3y agoThe entire time I was watching this I was thinking that a PID controller is exactly what is needed here. Any idea why he did not opt for that? Heck, he could have hacked the cruise controller itself to set the "speed" to 60 Hz.
- ikekkdcjkfke 3y agoCould jack up a working car and put it in cruise control and fasten the alternator directly to a wheel hub
- actionfromafar 3y agoBingo.
- xyst 3y agoGood “hack” but when that jack you picked up at your discount hardware store fails. That vehicle will become a projectile
- oh_sigh 3y agoTake the wheels off, it won't go anywhere.
- glitchc 3y agoA working car already has an alternator. Just plug in to that.
- sneak 3y agoOr replace it with a bigger one that has more output (and thus more drag on the engine), and upgrade the belt for longevity. Then the car's built in electronics will handle keeping the throttle in the right place for idle. I'm in the process of designing a Sprinter mobile office roadtrip starlink vehicle with an asston of batteries in it, and upgrading the alternator so that the batteries are always charging from the diesel engine whenever underway is like step #1.
- BizarroLand 3y agoA high powered alternator and a carbureted engine with mechanical timing and nothing else on the engine but a starter, exhaust, flywheel, and cooling seems ideal. Something like this: https://www.powerbastards.com/proddetail.asp?prod=Fitzall-220 https://www.powerbastards.com/proddetail.asp?prod=Fitzall-22... That way you can set the starter idle for high RPMs to get the system up to speed with the resistance from the alternators and then set the idle speed at the ideal speed for the alternator to produce the most power. But even on a 4 cylinder engine you're going to have horsepower to spare, so you may want multiple alternators wired in series with beefy transfer bars, so build a custom mounting plate for as many as it takes to almost bog down the engine at 1200 rpm or so. These $350 alternators produce 220 amps at 14.6 volts at 1200 rpm, or 3200 watts each. I imagine you could run at least 3 of them on a properly set up 4 cylinder engine. That's getting close to 10 kilowatts of power before conversion and you would probably still not be taxing the system. On the other hand, at this point you've spent $2,000 or so and a month of backyard engineering time to build an 8000 watt generator when you can buy a 13,500 watt generator at lowes for $1,300 dollars. If you have a good motor you can run on a stand and a bunch of cheap or free alternators, then you just need the mounting system and inverter. Typical alternators put out about 40-80 amps, or 580-1200 watts. That at least has a chance of being cheaper.
- owenmarshall 3y agoIn the "quasi-DIY power generation space", take a look at Lister engines & their clones (Listeroids)[0]. You end up with a surprisingly efficient[1] engine when you run diesel that drives any belt system you want: flip from a generator to a mill to a water pump. They can run on most any alternative fuel you want to use - biodiesel, waste oils - and their simple low RPM construction means they are durable and easy to work on. [0]: http://www.justliveoffgrid.com/InstallationGuide.html http://www.justliveoffgrid.com/InstallationGuide.html [1]: https://diesel-bike.com/Lister_Gen/Lister1.html https://diesel-bike.com/Lister_Gen/Lister1.html
- s3krit 3y agoLister engines also sound fantastic, in my opinion. Due to where I live, I often hear them going past me and it's wonderful to hear them throttle up as they potter on by.
- MisterTea 3y agoThat 2 pole generator is meant for single cylinder gas engines screaming at 3600 RPM. Larger generators are 4 pole so they can turn at 1800 RPM for 60Hz and 1500 for 50Hz. And 5500W is not powerful IMO. That is a standard portable gas generator head. The car engine is way overpowered and likely not operating near efficiency. [] AC motor or generator speed: RPM = 120f/p, where f is in Hz, p is number of poles.
- naikrovek 3y agoI don't think this is a solution one would consider when perfection is desired, so I wouldn't worry much about critiquing projects like this one.
- NoNameHaveI 3y agoSilly question: since a hybrid like a Prius is MEANT to be a generator (of sorts), would an old Prius be a better choice for a stationary generator? Lord knows they are pretty abundant and fairly cheap now. Having lived 5 days without power in the wake of the Iowa derecho in August 2020, I now fully appreciate having an emergency source of electricity. Generators were not to be found, and many were stolen from people's yards, including one from an animal shelter. Gas and ice were hard to come by. Cooking was challenging for us since our stove was electric. My pellet grill was/is electric so we were unable to cook. After 3 days, we had to toss everything from the fridge and freezer.
- bbojan 3y agoI believe that the Japanese version of Prius (not sure if the regular one or PHEV) comes from the factory with this option - it can work as a full house generator as long as there is gas in the tank.
- snthd 3y agoJoey Hess's solar powered fridge system[0] is neat - instead of just storing energy in batteries he uses extra thermal mass[1]. [0] https://fridge0.branchable.com/ https://fridge0.branchable.com/ [1] https://fridge0.branchable.com/thermal_mass/ https://fridge0.branchable.com/thermal_mass/
- MyNameIs_Hacker 3y agoI have an 1800 watt 12v inverter in the trunk of my Prius and have pre-wired AMP cables to the battery for easy hookup for any family member not as technically inclined. This is limited, but I was able to run the oil heat and Internet for a few days when a winter storm took out power. The engine only runs when it needs to recharge the hybrid battery, so it is very efficient compare to a standard generator. You could probably get more power out with a custom inverter tied to the 140v hybrid battery, but this was quick and easy. I tried to swap in the refrigerator for the heat, but I had grounding issues that was tripping the inverter. Fortunately it was cold out so I was able to manage. Just remember a DR plan isn't done until you have tested it all the way.
- ChumpGPT 3y ago
- sp332 3y agoParts 1 and 2 do explain a lot of the decisions made, and I liked the process of improvising with lots of experience.
- slowhadoken 3y agoSomething hippies and cab company owners have known for decades. Very cool.
- HumblyTossed 3y agoWe got a whole house generator this year. It’s tied into the natural gas line and has a transfer switch that auto switches over when power is lost. I like DIY stuff, but the convenience of not doing DIY for something like this is great. Now… one thing that could be improved is there’s an 8 or so second loss of power while the generator spins up. If the whole house could run on batteries and the generator charge the batteries when mains can’t that would be awesome. But that solution would be very expensive right now.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- aporetics 3y agoThe DIY is fun, but if you want to think about it on a larger scale: https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D81N8CPF https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D81N8CPF From the abstract: > This thesis specifically highlights the value of small, mass-manufactured internal combustion piston engines retrofitted to participate in non-automotive system designs. The applications are unconventional and stem first from the observation that, when normalized by power output, internal combustion engines are one hundred times less expensive than conventional, large power plants. And: > The largest single component of this thesis is modeling, designing, retrofitting, and testing a reciprocating piston engine used as a compressor. Motivated again by the low cost of an internal combustion engine, this work looks at how an engine (which is, in its conventional form, essentially a reciprocating compressor) can be cost-effectively retrofitted to perform as a small-scale gas compressor.
- cortesoft 3y agoIsn't that market already served by portable generators? Engine manufacturers like Honda have been selling gas generators forever.
- danans 3y ago> when normalized by power output, internal combustion engines are one hundred times less expensive than conventional, large power plants. That's quite the caveat because with the higher power output comes far lower efficiency. That's fine for an emergency backup scenario, or for spinning reserves as the paper mentions, but it's a very operationally expensive for normal power generation. The idea of modularity is good, but that's already a part of the VPPs that are being built now.
- Toutouxc 3y agoWhile most people here seem to worry about cooling the engine, if you did this with a modern high-efficiency diesel, like a recent VW 2.0 TDI, the engine would probably struggle to reach any kind of operating temperature at all.
- graycat 3y agoWhen our electric power went out 2 months ago, I started thinking about emergency power. Our outage was unusually long, 2 days, because lightening hit a tree which fell on our overhead power lines to the house and pulled down all the lines, conduit, electrical boxes, etc. Got a little electrical meter and showed that usually my office (I'm writing software) uses a grand total of 55 Watts, maybe 100 W if I do more, maybe 1000 Watts if I use the laser printer, boot my tower case Web server with several hard disk drives and an AMD 8 core processor, a little more in the kitchen for the refrigerator and occasional use of the microwave oven and toaster, a little more if I want to keep the winter heat, fueled by natural gas, going. For the hours of an outage, I'll f'get about running the air conditioner, oven, washer, and dryer. Soooo, I can get by at 50 Watts and can do pretty well for a few days at peaks of 2000 Watts and an average over time of likely under 1000 Watts. Okay, and I have a car! Yup, a car has an engine and generator, both very well designed! A little shopping shows that I can get a box that will output 3200 -- 15,000 (in steps of about 2000) Watts, a different box for each step of 2000, of US standard 60 Hertz (Hz, cycles per second) A/C (alternating current, with a good approximation to the standard sine wave) at 120 Volts from any 12 Volt DC (direct current) storage battery. Just clip two leads onto the battery and run extension cords from the output of the box and keep the electrical loads I mentioned running. So, I could get a box that can output 4000 Watts ...! And I have a car! Hmm. Soooo, back the car out of the garage, raise the hood, set the box on a front fender of the car, attach the two leads from the box to the car battery, start the engine, just let the engine idle, run the extension cords from the output of the box to my office, kitchen, and, maybe, natural gas powered furnace, and, ..., check the amount of gasoline in the car's tank! Since I don't need much power, the car and the box would keep me going for a few hours or ~2 days of an outage. Uh, ..., don't have to be very inventive because there is something of an industry serving people with campers, trailers, off-grid cabins in the woods, etc. who do a lot with getting power from batteries, gasoline powered generators, etc. In short, just clip two leads onto the car battery, start the engine, let it idle (the car knows how to keep the battery charged without overcharging), run the extension cords, and wait for the local electric power utility to get the outage fixed! For the horrors of back feeding power to the whole house and maybe electricuting utility workers, etc., "no worries, mate": Are NOT trying to power the whole house. Instead, are just powering a few loads with extension cords. E.g., my office loads plug into the female sockets of a power strip which plugs into the wall. Soooo, just unplug the power strip from the wall and plug its male plug into the female socket at the end of one of the extension cords. Same for each of the microwave oven, toaster, refrigerator. For the electric power used by the natural gas powered furnace, that will have to be a little more involved. But, again, are just running the electric loads much like would on a camping trip. "No worries, Mate!".
- swamp40 3y ago120VAC is a waste if you are trying to generate power locally. Unless it's just for a few days or a week. Better to have 12VDC backups of whatever you need. Lights, refrigerator, fans, electronics. Like a semi cab. Then a wood stove for heat and cooking. Then the 12VDC can come from solar, wind, batteries, car engines, bicycles, etc.
- ianburrell 3y agoEverything you talked about generally runs on 120V DC. You are basically suggesting changing everything in your house to save some money on inverter. It isn't possible to run full-sized fridge on 12V DC with reasonably sized wires. It is more efficient to run 12V generator through inverter, 120V AC over the wires to AC gear, and convert back down to 12V for the things that need it.
- friend_and_foe 3y agoI'd like to keep my house running on 12v DC, I lived in an RV for a while and I liked it. All the lighting was 12v LEDs, there was an inverter for the fridge and some plugs. I'd probably do a similar setup, I could probably build the whole thing salvaging a dead RV and buying some lithium iron phosphate batteries. All I really need to run on 120v AC would be a refrigerator or two.
- walnutclosefarm 3y agoI don't see how this conversion makes much sense. He started with a generator that was junked because the ICE was shot. He could have replaced that ICE with an off the shelf 4 cycle engine for under $1000.00. Instead, he's got a car that even as junk was worth half what the new engine would cost, with the space requirements that come with a car, the investment in electronics and build, and the net result is a junked nearly 200hp car running an generator that can only use maybe 10HP tops. A great job of McGivering up something, but I can't imagine why anyone would do the second one.
- iancmceachern 3y agoPlus now no one but him can repair it. It's a super cool learning experience, and that's the value.
- mathisfun123 3y ago> Plus now no one but him can repair it. electronics aside, you think fewer people can repair a toyota than a random generator? and i'm just talking about common-ase-tech-knowledge type stuff, to say nothing of the availability of parts.
- iancmceachern 3y agoYes. Small internal combustion engines are super simple, and small engine manufacturers like those that make generators have an equally impressive dealer, spare parts and repair network to automotive manufacturers. In this case it was a harbor freight generator. They have lots of replacement engines available for very affordable prices (starting at less than $200) https://www.harborfreight.com/generators-engines/engines.html https://www.harborfreight.com/generators-engines/engines.htm... I always say, why buy a Toyota when a lawnmower engine will do do? It's not like Toyotas are more common.
- mathisfun123 3y ago> In this case it was a harbor freight generator. fair enough - i didn't watch the video and couldn't figure out what kind of genny it was. > It's not like Toyotas are more common. toyotas aren't more common than lawn mowers okay but cars are more common than lawn mowers (i looked it up to double check).
- chakintosh 3y agoHere in Morocco, 80s era car engines are still being converted to run on butane/propane and used to generate electricity to run well pumps (their favorite is the Mercedes M102 E23).
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sllabres 3y agoFascinating to watch the larger (professional) generator doing their work https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SzKu9QBGI4s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SzKu9QBGI4s I always think what happens when they fail to sync in time -- a bad day for a datacenter or worse
- nikau 3y agopower grids and similar have gauges that can show phase offset between 2 supplies, in the old days they would have to flick the switch once it was exactly pointing to zero offset, but would assume modern equipment can do it automatically.
- BizarreByte 3y agoI find it interesting how folks here are always so much more critical of things like this, despite being generally outside of what the average HNer is experienced with or knowledgeable about. Is this an ideal setup? Not even close, but you'll find mechanical people love to tinker with this kind of thing, myself included.
- Gustomaximus 3y agoWhere we live power goes out occasionally so I keep a modern 2.8kva inverter generator which is enough to power my office/internet and a few core household items. I was looking at powering the entire house more completly and looked at one of these: https://www.scintex.com.au/products/tractor-pto-generator https://www.scintex.com.au/products/tractor-pto-generator Basically you can connect this to the back of a tractor via PTO and you get significant power generation for a reasonable price relative to buying the equivalent standalone generator. This assuming you have a tractor... don't we all? If someone was interested in backup powering a whole house type thing there is regularly older tractors going for cheap and those engines are really built to work. Might be worth considering vs a car engine.
- walnutclosefarm 3y agoWithout question, if you've got a tractor you can rely on, I would get a PTO-driven generator for backup. Even a little 30HP diesel tractor will power a 15kw generator, which is big enough for almost any household as backup. Farms typically have the grown version of these (if your small tractor is 100hp, as is the case for farms around here, no reason not to have a 50kw backup generator).
- rapjr9 3y agoThere is a version of The Whole Earth Catalog that describes plans to turn an old car into a 10kW generator, enough to power a small off-the-grid town. I think they used the carborator to set the engine speed, so it didn't keep perfect 60Hz output but was good enough to run most appliances. I forget which version of the catalog it was in, one of the early ones I think. Maybe the generator itself was an old motor used as a generator, perhaps manually rewound?
- adnanh 3y agoWhy not use a motorcycle engine?
- 1letterunixname 3y agoLots of wasted energy using an entire bulky engine and all of the friction, lubrication, and electronics and sensor requirements (anything newer than 1985 is unsuitable) of it as a "generator". Taking the alternator out and converting it to hydroelectric or wind power is completely doable. That's all you need as the basis for generation. You don't need an entire car. One nice thing about alternators is they are constant voltage sources 14.4V DC over a wide range of RPM inputs after rectification by the trio from 3 phase AC and cleaned up with the VRM. This should be connected to a car battery with very short, very big leads because the voltage is low but the current is high (like a starter). From there, also use short/large leads to either use DC power directly or use a high efficiency inverter (smaller ones are cheap and ubiquitous). Congrats, that's your budget OTG setup. The current rating of the windings, VRM, and of the trio will determine maximum current output. Typically, 2-10 HP will max out an alternator with a rating in the range of 40-200A (560 - 2kW). This is another reason why using a whole automotive engine is pointless: because it's oversized by 2 orders of magnitude. The most difficult thing about powering an alternator non automotive use is increasing the gear enough and mounting it somewhere secure enough to put enough tension on the belt. Rarely will you ever direct drive an alternator. Hydroelectric power with a high head, even with a relatively small stream, contains an enormous amount of potential energy. A Pelton wheel in direct drive maybe possible, but it would probably need slight gear reduction (smaller pulley than the alternator's under high tension with quality bearings on both) for maximum efficiency because the wheel would could be spinning 8k+ RPM. https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/microhydropower-systems https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/microhydropower-systems You can remove the VRM and get ~28VDC but it's going to be ugly and un-regulated. A battery of some sort is required to energize the field coil or no power will be generated.