So here's my new 4 stage project: Take some bike parts and some car parts, and put them together to make some electricity. This is not a new idea. It's not even that original. Pretty much everything I aim to do, has been attempted and done before, just not by me. Hopefully, Stage 4 will be where it really opens up into new territory, if I make it that far. Jim and I have been talking about doing this for somewhere close to 2 years now. In that time, a lot of the things we've talked about have been done by other people. Each time we come back to the topic, we learn a little more and it gets a little closer to reality. This time the topic came up, something sparked in my brain and it's time to execute on it. I have come up with some basic guidelines to take me forward:
- Spend $0 on new bike-specific parts. My bin runneth over already.
- Spend as little as possible on the electrical parts.
- Stage 1 must be completed before messing around in Stage 2, and so on.
- Power must be usable, to get out of Stage 1, the system will have to measurably produce full power for an hour of riding.
I should probably outline what I'm hoping to accomplish before I get too far down the line. Stage 1: Working stationary bike that is capable of producing usable 12v electricity and storing it in a battery. Looking to create a sustained 80w of power at this point. Hopefully 100w, but we'll have to see how efficient of an alternator I can get for cheap. This will require some parts and materials some of which I have, so I will have to scrounge:
- 12v DC alternator
- 12v deep cycle battery
- Wiring in various gauges and terminals to connect them
- Drive belt
- Nuts/bolts and some parts to mount this up to my stationary trainer
- Ammeter to quantify the output
A few days ago, I pulled an alternator and battery from a junk 1988 Dodge Caravan that my dad had sitting in the farm yard. It's a 3 wire, 75 amp aftermarket alternator for that van, so I'm hoping it's good and efficient. The battery is not a deep cycle battery, but it was also an upgrade for the van, a Die Hard that will do 800 cold crank amps. Eventually, I'll need to swap the battery for a deep cycle version so it can take repeated charges and discharges. Last night, once I figured out what the heck the wires were all for, I hooked it up in about 15 minutes, with some seriously half-assed connections.
My brother-in-law Jared helped me hold the alternator pulley against the rear tire on my trainer while I pedaled. I had a multimeter set up to show voltage. While powering the alternator field without movement, the volts were down just above 2v (battery had been sitting for a long time unused), I started pedaling, got it up over the 1800rpm range, and the voltage spiked up to a full 14.4v which means the alternator was then successfully powering itself and beginning to charge the battery. So with Stage 1 solidly underway, now comes the more serious business of cleaning up the wiring and mounting the alternator solidly to produce a constant level of power output. So here we go.
