OT: thoughts on this 'powerpot'

It looks like a peltier device.

I wonder how resistant it is to overheating damage.

It is basically a thermocouple which had s**te efficency in a heated room, and most other places. Seriously, if they were that great, they'd be using them down the Antartic to top up their batteries from the cooking stove..

Expensive cooking pot really. That cord will eventually melt/burn and then you'll just have a heavy cooking pot.

I may have missed it, but I couldn't see what the specs were on the output of this device, and the details on cables and the apparent in line box-converter? seemed very vague?

Basically it looks good and scaling up for a wood stove etc. would be interesting. I lived off a wood stove for many years.

Don...

I was wondering the same about heat damage too.

Yes, pretty vague unfortunately.

Unless your habits are entirely nocturnal, wouldn't a 5W solar panel (plus regulator) do the same job for less money?

Possibly, although maybe not during much of winter time. The cost of the device is the killer, obviously.

I already have solar panels, my main interest is in the fact that we run a wood heater or stove here most of the year, so plenty of energy in the form of heat to exploit.

I wonder if some sort of turbine could be added to the heater flue? Creosote buildup would be an issue, I guess... all I know is water turbines for hydro power are becoming *very* efficient these days, I wonder if the same could be applied to a heat driven turbine.

Since you've got plenty of heat, and presumably aren't short of water either, then a steam turbine ought be the most efficient way to go!

vague deliberately, if you knew you would realise that it was not as good a s they want you to think.

At one stage, in one of the alternate small farm mags, Earth Garden or ????, there was a guy selling complete steam generators. It just comes down to steam driving a piston which uses an arm to drive a flywheel turning a generator/alternator.

This device uses the Seebeck effect to generate electricity and is not very effificient compared to say a stirling engine or a gas turbine.

Then there's the dunking duck (drinking bird, or whatever)... google will find it. You can make a large one using a refrigerant gas, such as propane, which ought be capable of driving a small generator using the original Pitman arm principal (as found on treadle sewing machines).

Err, one of the mythbuster projects was a cross arm with LPG cylinders at each end with solar heating the rising one. It works, but energy out put is minimal.

AFAIRI, thise dunking ducks did't keep going.

On Fri, 18 Apr 2014 13:45:19 +0000 (UTC), news13 blathered on in:

I reckon deleting the word and sense 'eventually' might be the go...

A bit noisier...

The one in SA was a massive combination of thermocouples. Does that make a themopile?

I know what a peltier is; it is what you get in those crap coolers eskies they sell in auto places and other.

Just have to own a Forrest and pile the wood on all day.

Yeah, as far as I know that's what thermopiles are. They are/were used in nuclear based thermal power supplies in satellites.

Peltiers are great little devices, I reckon supercheap and others with their cheap arse coolers have given them a bad name!

I think silicon chip did a project with them once but the 5A draw was a bit much for my interests/needs at the time.