Turn a ceiling fan into a wind turbine generator?!

hey there have you ever wondered if a ceiling fan can be turned into a winter wine I have one left over so let's find out there are a couple of reasons why I think ceiling fan is interesting to use because it has a large low rpm stator no gears or belts it has a strong shaft and strong ball bearings there are no brushes better wings can meet tests easily and it can often be found for free in the trash okay first thing to do is to get it open and to remove all the stuff that we do not need it starts with three wires you will probably need none of them these three go through the motor score into the control box on the other side oh that's tough in the control box is useless to this project so take it all out first we had three wires on the one side now we're left with four different ones on the other side see how well this thing spins it looks like a solid base for a wind turbine but the main reason why this project is a bad idea is that this is an induction motor it will not generate electricity when you spin it therefore we have to add magnets yeah I thought that would be easy so next the core of the motor needs to be opened here you see how I got mine open yours may be different getting the motor to open was quite difficult but we found this handy trick connect one side to wooden plank with a hole in it then you can easily kick out the other part without causing damage alright Stan it's open this half contains the rotating part of the induction motor we don't need this part because instead we're going to place magnets in there and here is our first view of the stator and its coils pretty impressive and complicated this is the stationary part of the motor it contains two coils and really weird shaped iron stator as a motor it can run at 3 speeds and in two directions that's why it's so complicated we are going to make it simple by only using the large coils now how does this work set work I will be ignoring the inner coils when an electric current is running through the copper wire the two iron parts inside of one coil both turn into a magnetic north or south pole depending on the direction of the current the direction of the coil wire is alternating and the electric current is alternating as well resulting in an alternating pattern of poles we are turning this induction motor into a generator therefore we need as many magnets as there are coils at first we used cheap magnets just to see if this weird stator would work at all we have four wires the two for the inner coils we don't use be sure that these ends don't touch as that will be like having a strong magnetic break on your generator the two wires coming from the large coils will deliver AC alternating current turning the generator slowly is already enough to lie some LEDs but be careful because turning it any faster will kill the LEDs okay now that we know that this weird stator can produce electricity we should make a better router because these loose magnets are weak and the air gap is huge and how to improve the stator the inner coils may be a magnetic drag I'm not sure but I do love to remove the unnecessary and we sold a thicker copper wire to the coil ends better than the flimsy original wire this then is the improved generator it now contains strong magnets and the air gap is reduced but actually there still are many ways to improve on this as I will explain at the end of this video the generator spins well not too much magnetic Coggan and look what happens when you make a shortcut as soon as two wires touch the rotor stop spinning that's a good sign current is flowing Lenz law at work the conversion from induction motor to generator has succeeded may not be the best generator ever but with a little spin this conditioned lab start to glow putting the two shells together again gives the generator body more strength it is time to put some wings on it I have some old r/c helicopter blades that may work a real airfoil and weather proof with the helicopter blades attached really it starts to look like a wind turbine though this experiment is far from over because don't expect to charge your phone with this electricity using this electricity straight from the source will kill your phone a phone needs a steady 5 volts DC while this generator produces unsteady AC current the complete opposite of what you want now how can we convert this useless almost random electricity into the useful steady 5 12 or 24 volts DC current first we need to know what we have we know we have an AC current measuring the AC without a load gives up to about fifty volts that's very useful with a load attached the voltage will be lower first thing to do is to connect a full bridge rectifier which contains four diodes transforming the AC into post DC when connecting a small LED panel to it and turning a rotor very slowly you can see the pulsing DC current spinning a rod faster will produce two high voltage and kill the LEDs so don't do that placing a capacitor on the DC output of the rectifier it's like placing a large room for the electrons to gathering resulting in a more steady flow towards the LEDs as you can see it's more steady but the voltage level is still all over the scale in between the DC output of the rectifier and the LEDs we placed a DC to DC converter it takes in any voltage up to about 30 volts and brings it to a level you have selected here we'll set it to output almost 3 volts the DC output is now steady and pretty safe to use this DC to DC converter gives you a couple of options to set the output voltage to limit the output current and I think a way to set a minimum voltage input anything USB needs to steady 5 volts DC that and the other levels can be set with a small screwdriver although the electric system works we are not done yet there are many things I do not like about the construction so far there's a hole in the center of the soft iron that reduces the magnetic force the air gap is still too large the copper magnet wire is very thin giving a lot of resistance the magnet wire is weld so that it doesn't touch the sides of the iron core losing magnetic touch the magnets are glued on wood instead of iron all these issues reduce potential output of this generator question is what can we fix and is it worth doing that and if you have something useful to add please write it down in the comments below here is where the unwanted hole in the ironies it's probably only there to give access to the machine that wants the inner coils we can fill the holes with laminated soft iron and by doing so we'll get a stronger magnetic force to work on a copper magnet wire this is soft Aaron laminate a good source of it our old transformers like this one we glued the R in in the stator it's messy but now the iron can't move towards the magnets this thin wire and how it's not in touch with all sides of the iron core look at this space best would be to rewire the stator tight with thicker wire but that's expensive and a lot of work I'm not going to do that so after adding the extra iron we've put it back together this time in a more compact way this bolt locks the axle and this tube protects the wire the extra soft iron improves the magnetic force and power output a bit slowly rotating the generator with just one finger turns all the LEDs on now for the next part I can use some help some good suggestions in the comments please this is about my first time working with electronics I know how to improve the generator but the electronics not so I think my collection of parts is not efficient and not safe when the generator turns too fast but here's what I got the AC from the generator goes into the full grits rectifier on the DC output of the rectifier is a capacitor that can handle up to 50 volts if the focus goes higher than 50 there's a problem from the capacitor the current goes through a linear voltage regulator which lets no higher than 24 volts through which is near the maximum the DC to DC converter can handle this input when the voltage is higher than 24 the linear voltage regulator will waste at power into heat and when the input is too much of everything it shuts itself down for safety then a simple DC to DC converter that shows the input voltage and can efficiently convert anything between 6 to 24 volts into a steady and safe to use 5 volts DC we now spend a generator too fast on purpose to show how the linear voltage regulator will shut itself down it's not broken it just needs to cool down next and last and they use the output of the DC to DC converter easy use with power meter with a small LED light in it you can see how the output is a steady 5 volts if there's enough input power time for a conclusion I of course wanted to end this video standing outside next to a finished wind turbine but I decided not to continue with this generator because the power output is very disappointing and I understand why I basically created a very poor quality generator so yes a ceiling fan can be turned into a wind turbine but I don't recommend it even if you do a better job than I did because there are better alternatives better alternative number one is to simply use a brushless motor that contains magnets here are some examples one from a quadcopter one from an e-bike and one from a hoverboard better alternative number two is to build generator from scratch this is more fun and a lot of work but the result can be better than building upon a poor quality ceiling fan I'm looking forward to read your comments and hope that some of you can make a better version ceiling fan generator having learned from my first in one all right I have a good time making something see ya

Channel: Giesbert Nijhuis

Views: 4,609,578

Rating: 4.8319244 out of 5

Keywords: giesbert, nijhuis, wind turbine, generator, DIY, ceiling fan

Id: ApKFeaJ6xYE

Length: 14min 41sec (881 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 07 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/YOUREABOT]

I think the issue was, not using a battery in between( Those are essentially big capacitors now) and use them as basic as u can putting more wind turbines than using time to build better ones( I would suggest barrel style propellers, for many vertical wind turbines!)