Can a Rotating Fan Be Used to Power a House?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Manraj singh
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Electricity Fan
AI Thread Summary
Using a rotating fan to power a house is impractical due to inefficiencies in energy conversion. Attaching a lever to a fan to generate electricity would likely lead to increased energy consumption rather than production. The fan motor would draw more current under load, resulting in additional heat losses. While the idea of energy recovery systems exists, a small cooling fan is not efficient enough to provide significant power. Overall, the concept is deemed overly complicated and ineffective for practical energy generation.
Manraj singh
Messages
66
Reaction score
0
Other people must have come up with this before, but what if we attach a lever to a rotating fan. The lever can be attached to a bulb to run it, or maybe something like a Leyden jar or a KERS, (mind me if its the wrong device, i am just a rookie) to store it. So won't the house be self sufficient?
 
Engineering news on Phys.org
If you mean an electric fan instead of a wind generator.
Losses (you can't get something from nothing), it's more efficient to just run the bulb directly from the same supply as the fan.

boylespmm.jpg
 
Last edited:
I would like to interest the OP in my idea for dehydrated water. It makes it much easier to ship and it doesn't dry up like the real thing.
 
Fan generating electricity.

I meant that when people are using the fan normally. Like when you are feeling hot. That time all the energy produced can be used
 
Manraj singh said:
I meant that when people are using the fan normally. Like when you are feeling hot. That time all the energy produced can be used

There are waste energy recover systems but a small cooling fan is not very efficient in converting electrical energy to energy in air flow (<<50%) so by the time you build the mechanical turbine system and generator(with their own losses) you won't have much left to keep you cool if you need more than milliwatts of power for a bulb.
 
Manraj singh said:
I meant that when people are using the fan normally. Like when you are feeling hot. That time all the energy produced can be used
You aren't being very descriptive, but what you are saying sounds wrong: an electric fan consumes energy, it doesn't generate it.
 
Yeah, while consuming that electricity, it rotates,generating a lot of kinetic energy. Now what if we attach a lever to one of the rotating blades. That lever attached to a device which can store that energy, which can be consumed later.
 
Manraj singh said:
Yeah, while consuming that electricity, it rotates,generating a lot of kinetic energy. Now what if we attach a lever to one of the rotating blades. That lever attached to a device which can store that energy, which can be consumed later.

The fan motor will just use more electricity (in a very inefficient manner), as you increase the load the motor 'slip' will increase drawing more current to generate the needed extra torque and causing additional resistive heat losses. It's a Rube Goldberg idea for energy storage.
 
Thank you.
 
  • #10
Ya..you will be loading (or perhaps over loading) the motor and the motor will suck more current/power...you may want to try another fan against this one as is done in a fluid coupling...
 
Back
Top