Can you generate useful power with just stationary magnets and moving wire conductor?

vk6kro

Can you generate useful power with just stationary magnets and moving wire conductor?

My local power station has been moving wires through a stationary magnetic field for as long as I can remember. It works just as well as moving a magnetic field past a stationary wire.
Both methods generate a voltage across the wire.

If people turn on their big-screen TVs then the generator gets harder to turn so they have to provide more power by pressing the accellerator pedal on the driving engine a little more. This uses more diesel, so the extra power comes at a price.

As you say, you can't get something for nothing. Whichever way you generate power, as soon as the current starts to flow, you have to supply mechanical power to get electrical power out and also to overcome friction losses etc in the generating equipment.

rfstanton

Thanks guys for the helpful info. Follow up questions:Do you know any significant factors that would adversely affect grid tie in with the homopolar design?Advantages/disadvantages of a dc compared to ac homopolar design. As far as the other question at hand, having done a lot of mechanical work on engines, I believe the power curve in int. comb. engines has to do with inherent limitations of the fuel delivery sys. and the configuration of the intake, combustion chamber, exhaust, airflow through the system, each design favoring peak, etc. at different points. Electrical I imagine is basically the same in that each design has different inherent limitations in the various components. Please continue. I am still interested in persuing the differences in the "back pressures" encountered by a generator when more load is applied. Would this be the same in homopolar V conventional? I realize that homopolar design is not front and center in current study, so if it's too much research for the time you have, I understand. It's not life and death that I figure this out.
Referring back to a prior response, the picture is getting clearer, I didn't know about the field created around a conductor so that explains a lot esp. resistance to load. ...RS

Bob S

Homopolar generators are for very high current (meg-amp) unipolar pulses .They cannot generate ac power (50 Hz, 60 Hz). I don't know how the current could be regulated. Normal generators (alternators etc.) have feedback loops. I have heard that homopolar generators are dangerous to use; someone was blinded while using liquid sodium jets to make low-resistance electrical contact with the rim of the flywheel.
Bob S

rfstanton

Bob,
Thanks for the concern, you're a real sweetheart. Don't worry I'm not gay. Not that I have anything against them. "To each it's own, it's all unknown, if dogs run free"...Bob Dylan. Anyway, I had the same thoughts regarding the homopolar design in that if the current generated was not being bled off somehow, I could see how a large charge could be built up and would eventually find ground (equilibrium). I thought that the homopolar design might have potential in low tech home grown power generation, but the more I find out about it, the more it seem prudent to let the more high tech folks pursue this technology. Looks like Parker Kinetic Design is hard at work on something to do with it. Unfortunately, it seems their line of research has to do with war machinery. My original line of thought was to find something that second,third, or maybe even first world could use to generate inexpensive, low tech elect. power. Maybe even using man or beast of burden as source of input power.
Pipe dream probably, but sometimes the diamonds get left lying in the sand. Thanks again.

...RS