I need some help with understanding how to go about building a circuit. I have an array of thousands of generators that produce very small voltages < 1 VDC and I somehow need to combine them. Ideally the electricity generated could be captured in rechargeable batteries. I'm not an electrical engineer and would like to find someone that could help me design and build this project. Let me know if you have an idea of how to do it and/or if you're interested in helping on the project.
I don't know the physical form of your generators, but if they are electrically isolated and continuosly produce power, and at a similar rate, you could assemble them in series which would increase the voltage in proportion to the number in series
Thanks for the responses. I guess I needed to give a little more detail to get to the meat of the matter. I know about parallel and series and basic electrical circuitry. The challenge is that the generators are variable voltage. The generators are very small wind turbines that turn in a light breeze. Each one is capably of generating a small amount of voltage when wind is available. For instance if you have an array of
1000 tiny turbines that will each generate say 0.1 VDC in a 1 mph breeze then you have a potential voltage of 100 VDC. At any given time you could have some generating .05, 1.02, .3, etc... all different voltages. I was thinking about having a little circuit with each one that either has rechargeable battery or a capacity. Somehow they would all feed together and capture the energy. Small arrays like these could be used in a lot more places then the large turbines and could be used to power smaller needs.
Thanks for the responses. I guess I needed to give a little more detail to get to the meat of the matter. I know about parallel and series and basic electrical circuitry. The challenge is that the generators are variable voltage. The generators are very small wind turbines that turn in a light breeze. Each one is capably of generating a small amount of voltage when wind is available. For instance if you have an array of
1000 tiny turbines that will each generate say 0.1 VDC in a 1 mph breeze then you have a potential voltage of 100 VDC. At any given time you could have some generating .05, 1.02, .3, etc... all different voltages. I was thinking about having a little circuit with each one that either has rechargeable battery or a capacitor. Somehow they would all feed together and capture the energy. Small arrays like these could be used in a lot more places then the large turbines and could be used to power smaller needs.
There are many applications where a big spinning blade is impractical, unsightly or dangerous. I can't disclosing the full details of the design but believe me it's practical.
It may not be a good idea to connect the micro-generators in series, even tho this is a simple solution, because then the current would flow thro all equally, and the strong ones might end up powering the weak ones as motors.
There are several ways you could go about combining the individual outputs from many generators, but I think the most attractive is to convert the generated power into a current, because then you can simply wire them in parallel to combine the power. You can add a battery with an inverter, or any of several other good schemes to make use of the varying output current.
One of the reasons this is an attractive approach is that there's an easy and cheap way to make many current converters, wherein each converter employs a MOSFET, a simple inductor and a diode. A clock generator and gate driver is required to drive the power MOSFETs. The clock turns the MOSFET on for say 95% of the time, during which the generator's voltage causes current to build up in the inductor. Before this current can get too high the clock driver turns off the MOSFET, interrupting the current path, and allowing the inductor to "flyback" and deliver the accumulated current to the output capacitor.
If the gate clock rate is fast enough, compared to the inductor's value, the inductor current does not vary greatly and the circuit acts as a sort of dc power transformer, stepping up the delivered voltage, and providing the output energy in a way that can be easily combined with all the other generators. . . inductor Schottky . gen ---####-----------+---------|>|---+----+---- output . _ _______ __ | | _|_ load . |_| |_| D MOSFET | --- . ,--- G 2n7000 | | . | S ---, | gnd . ____ | | | . gen ---####--- | -----+--- | ---|>|---+ . | | | | . | D | | . +--- G | | . | S ---+ | . ____ | | | . gen ---####--- | -----+--- | ---|>|---+ . | | | | . | D | | . +--- G | | . | S ---+ | . | | | . : : : . | | | . gate ground output . driver bus bus
Each circuit will reach an equilibrium current that will depend on the generator voltage, the output voltage and the duty cycle, but most of the energy from the generator will end up in output if the right components and operating conditions are chosen. Things like MOSFET capacitance and inductor resistance will be important, along with actively controlling the output load to allow a high output voltage compared to a Schottky diode drop.
Let me add, that if the generators are identical and are equally presented to the wind field :-), they should create equal output currents and the best solution is to wire them in series. It's a simple matter to design a dc-dc converter to deal with the wide range of varying output voltages you'll encounter.
I've lost count of how many times I've seen the "I cant tell you because its a secret" disclaimer from posters who want to sound intelligent by asking a narrow technical question, instead of looking foolish by telling the whole story.
Gee Luhan that's neat, your so witty and intelligent. My technical expertise is in application development. If you posted a question in my area I would not be as rude and presumptuous as you. Happy Holidays.
Thank you for the detailed response. This makes a lot of sense and meets the need of being relative inexpensive. One of the goals here it so make it as cheap as possible so that more people can afford to build/buy them.
When I've got the go ahead from my patent attorney my plan is to release the ideas (there are two relating designs) as public domain so that anyone can build them. If anyone would like to help with this let me know.
If you don't mind I would like to follow up with you with questions about your method after I've had time to do research on it.
Why get a patent and then release it? It free to simply make a public disclosure, and then nobody can patent it. You can do that here, now. IBM has a disclosure site, for research they don't want to patent but they'd prefer somebody else not patent either.
I should think that power depends roughly on the cross-sectional area that the air intersects. A windmill with big blades will intersect a lot of area. It goes as r^2. A lot of small windmills will produce very little power at great expense.
I'm sure that the guys who build commercial wind farms have done the math, and they go for the big ones.
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Many thanks,
Don Lancaster voice phone: (928)428-4073
Synergetics 3860 West First Street Box 809 Thatcher, AZ 85552
rss: http://www.tinaja.com/whtnu.xml email: don@tinaja.com
Please visit my GURU\'s LAIR web site at http://www.tinaja.com
I would not post a question without giving the whole story. Otherwise, how is it possible to tell who has a real project and who is just blowing smoke??? You need to establish a bit more credibility to get a serious answer from me.
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Many thanks,
Don Lancaster voice phone: (928)428-4073
Synergetics 3860 West First Street Box 809 Thatcher, AZ 85552
rss: http://www.tinaja.com/whtnu.xml email: don@tinaja.com
Please visit my GURU\'s LAIR web site at http://www.tinaja.com
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