“After building a couple of reasonably successful alternators out of wood, I thought it would be fun to make one utilizing steel behind the magnets, and some sort of steel laminates. The most recent wooden alternator I built works great, but the lack of iron behind the magnets and coils severely limits its maximum output […]
Here’s a great little tutorial on creating a 1,000 watt wind turbine. “We built a 1000 watt wind turbine to help charge the battery bank that powers our off grid home. It’s a permanent magnet alternator, generating 3 phase ac, rectified to dc, and fed to a charge controller. The magnets spin with the wind, […]
Need some serious solar power? Here’s how to convert an old junk TV into a 2000ºF solar cooker. It’s a technique for hacking a 4 foot mega magnifying lens out of your old TV, and some of the things you can do with it… It can purify or boil water, instantly start a fire, melt metal, […]
In this era where everyone’s searching for innovative ways to harness the sun’s energy, the makers of Blight, a solar venetian blind, deserve some recognition. This solar blind takes power from the sun during the day and gives it back to you at night by transforming into a light. No power cables are needed, and […]
What if we could live in a clean world? A world in which energy would be 100% renewable, water no longer polluted, transportation truly green and production methods clean and regenerative? There will be such a world. This documentary explores the unprecedented possibilities of a new industrial revolution: Cleantech. Signs of a new future are […]
This is VERY VERY cool… “Here’s how to build a photo-bioreactor that uses algae to convert carbon dioxide and sunlight into energy. The energy that is produced is in the form of algae biomass. The photo-bioreactor is built from plastic recycled water bottles. By designing the apparatus to be compartmentalized, we are able to do […]
This is an excellent example of up-cycling old stuff and creating something really practical & useful from it… “After our first attempt at a home built proof of concept solar thermal panel, we were a bit disappointed with the results. It took about 4 hours before the thing started work, and was a bit costly […]
“Standing tall like a giant sunflower in a sea of undulating prairie grasses, or in any rural setting, a windmill is a thing of beauty. Not only are water pumping windmills a joy to watch, but they are incredibly useful. Powered only by wind, they work like quietly-purring nonpolluting creatures, to keep our storage tanks […]
If you’re looking for a cool alternative energy project – no doubt a very cool bonding project to share with the kids – then building this vertical axis wind turbine has got to be right up there. Just don’t expect it to go powering your washing machine anytime soon (output is roughly estimated at 50 […]
Here’s a pretty cool little “up-cycling” project. This guy got some free time one day and decided, instead of sitting on his ass, he was going to made a basic solar furnace to take the chill off his garage. Built using old soda cans and other scrap materials… “I decided instead to take advantage of the south-facing side […]