Feel the Power
The average person doesn’t understand the scope of human energy use. I decided to make installations to demonstrate energy by letting people peddle or crank a generator to power common devices. This would help put energy into perspective.
One simple project might be to help some people take their cell phones off the grid. They’d have to use different devices to capture energy from the sun or from a generator that they crank themselves.
Picture here are two solar collectors with batteries and a hand crank that can be used to power a cell phone.
Do you want to give them a try? I have more arriving but these devices are ready for use.
I think at that rate it should take like 20h to charge. This will take a few days. It would be interesting to have a few amp readings throughout the day to get a sense of how much solar energy your getting. Also to know when it is occurring exactly.
Sanjay’s numbers at the moment:
Battery voltage: 3.475V
Solar cell: 3.805
Solar cell: current: 25.852mA (max)
We’ve got four adopters on the project so far. Rick, Sanjay, Steve and myself.
Both Sanjay and Rick have one of the panels pictured above.
The crank generator suffered a mechanical failure although it looks like it was working before that.
I suspect the crank doesn’t give enough juice to run most phones in real time. Also that the solar will take too long to charge.
It will be interesting to see the discussion that comes forward!