Beer Goggle Dreams

September 25, 2008 11:12 AM 9/25/08

Look...here’s the thing. From a personal standpoint I want everyone in the world to have free electricity. Period. So it’s always on my mind.

And with the coming unrest in my country (the US) it behooves many of us to think about generating that power ourselves.

But here’s the problem. I’ve got a lot of ideas. A lot. They come to me from time to time and some of them are workable and some, like the one from yesterday, are not. And if they come to me they come to other people as well.

But as a species we don’t seem to be paying a damn bit of attention. Those that _have_ are more concerned about keeping what they have instead of making sure that _others_ _have_. Those that _don’t_ “have” are concerned about just surviving. This seems awfully lobsided to me.

So when I look at how cheap it is to generate power from the forces of nature I can’t help but be confused as to why we’re not doing so. It’s not a “single technology” solution but depending on the local environment we can power the world using wind, solar, and rain without serious impact on the environment except for the chemicals that make up the solar cells.

Picture this...

South America:

There is a rainwater reservoir at the top of a hill. The hill need not be very high - in fact as long as it’s got ten feet of grade that should be good enough. The reservoir need not be concrete either - it can be clay and stone - but concrete made from native materials should do well enough.

Now at the bottom of that reservoir is a pipe. That pipe leads down the hill to a box. The box contains a turbine. It need not be a complex turbine however I think the Tesla turbine is still one of the most stable ones yet devised.

That turbine is attached to a generator head unit. The generator is attached to a charge controller and that to an electrical grid or a bank of batteries.

South America is in the 80+ inch rain zone. They get a ton of water. A ton.

You could even do this on a smaller scale - say the size of one of the old movie western style water towers. Even if it takes an hour to drain that tower through a coiled pipe and a small nozzle that’s enough to charge a battery for _something_.

Furthermore it’s cheap. It’s stable. It can be made locally with perhaps the exception of the generator head. But frankly the right electric motor and a few metal tablespoons and you can source that locally too.

It need not be above the ground either. You could in theory put this all in a long vertical pit so it doesn’t take up a lot of space. Servicing the generator would be a pain but it would work.

I said it once and I’ll say it again - this stuff is easy folks.

Most of this stuff could be made of discarded junkyard materials so cost isn’t an issue.

It’s a needed resource in many parts of the world so that’s not a stop either.

It doesn’t take the brightest scientists in the world to come up with this. I’ve just given this simple idea to you for free. So research isn’t a cost factor.

Safety? A fence around the reservoir and a box around the generator and that’s covered. Already in-use safety measures can be applied.

So what’s stopping this? Hmm?

I plan, though it may take me time to do it, to have a bank of batteries in my house that is charged by wind, solar, and rain. Period.

Batteries are expensive! Yes but they are an investment. Furthermore do you know that many hospitals and care locations have to swap their batteries out on a schedule? That means the batteries are often still good when they do so. Check into it. They often have to pay to have them recycled. And they use a fair amount of batteries...

The house power will initially be wind based hopefully, then rain based, then finally solar. Each one supplementing the other.

With this stuff available to even the average man there’s no reason to be paying the power companies.

None at all.