DIY Generator

Energy and cost saving projects are all around. People always try to get all that they can out of their appliances, and some even buy new, energy efficient appliances. Everyone wants to combat these new rises in the cost of electricity.

Building your own generator can be a difficult task if you do not know what you are doing. Assembling the correct parts for the generator is the first step. If you do not know what you need you can ask a mechanic or engineer to help you.

Main content:

Main content:

❂ What is a generator?

❂ Blueprints for home generator

❂ Basic information about other DIY generators: 

1. Build Your Own Homemade Wind Generator Using Wind Energy To Create Free Electricity.
2. DIY Old Washing Machine Generator
3. How To Build A DIY Generator From A Lawnmower
4. How I Built a Wind Generator in My Backyard for $150
5. This Open Source DIY Solar Generator Unfolds Like a Flower

What is a generator?

Generator is a device that converts mechanical energy into electrical energy using the principle of electromagnetic induction. Primary mechanical energy sources can be steam turbine engines, water turbines, internal combustion engines, wind turbines or other mechanical energy sources. Generators play a pivotal role in power supply equipment. It performs three functions: power generation, rectification, voltage correction. Currently on the market are popular two types of generators gasoline and diesel generators.

Demonstration A generator converts kinetic energy into electricity with fuel as gasoline

Basic structure of generator

• Engine
• Player
• Fuel system
• Voltage regulation
• Cooling system
• Exhaust system
• Battery charger
• Control Panel or control device

Those are the pre-designed manufacturers. The natural problem is posed:

• Can you build your own generator?
• Can a fan be used as a generator?
• How can I generate electricity for free?
• Can a magnetic generator power a house?

That also means building a generator for the house.

The following section will answer the DIY Generator problem

Note: 

• The above is the concept of a most common type of generator, whose output is AC, with a frequency of 50 -60Hz, voltage can be customized as 110V, 220V, 380V.
• In addition to the AC generator mentioned above, there are many other types of generators, which later for convenience, still have to use inverters to convert into AC electricity. For example solar system, Earth battery, wind generator, etc.

Blueprints for home generator

For each different type of generator, the design plans are different. Here I present the blueprint for the most common type of generator, the AC generator.

Using common knowledge in physics, we can completely build a generator. However many problems arise such as frequency of current, output voltage, generator capacity, etc. Not to mention how to wind the coil to get the desired voltage. So a blueprint is essential to DIY generators.

Here is the design:

Blueprints for home generator by Easy Power Plan

Realistic results after DIY generator:

Information about the plan:

Plan of Homemade AC Generator:

✔ The Real Nature of Tesla AC Generator

Generates Energy-On-Demand: Easy Power Plan Will Change Our World Forever

✔ Combination of induction motor and alternator
✔ Combination between generators
✔ Or maybe called Overunity for the system. Mother Nature doesn't care about people calling or naming phenomena. Overunity or Free Energy, or Zero Point Energy (ZPE) are just a few different words

And it is one of the best methods to make an AC generator for your home.

Basic information about other DIY generators 

The information below is very useful for those who are looking to make a generator for their own home. However, unfortunately it is still not the best method. Because today's understanding of electricity is the result of the suppression of truth more than 100 years ago, and the way generators are built is the result of a lie in science. However, I still collect articles for your reference. Hope useful. For the facts, please see some studies:

• Homemade Generator: Magnetic Generator to Power Your Home
• Magnetic Energy Generator

Even so, it's also a good idea to start with BS:

Choosing green energy as power source is not only a good decision but also an economic and sustainable one choice. Even there are available alternative sources of energy today; there are ways that have never been considered on the past. But as of the present, there is almost an unlimited possibility of creating energy and one of them is creating a free energy at home by using a DIY generator.

Over the decades, the world has been paying interest on the potentials of renewable energy. To be specific, solar and wind energies are the top two choices in devising the DIY generator. As a result of the ballooning demand for these products, the prices are starting to tag down dramatically. The components and the raw materials are readily available on local hardware stores. There is the growing industry of DIY solar generators and DIY Wind turbines. The online markets also sell these generators.

1. Build Your Own Homemade Wind Generator Using Wind Energy To Create Free Electricity.

Getting on track with home wind energy plan can set you back a pretty penny if you buy a market product, but if you’re a bit clever and seeking to obtain something, get creative in the garage or backyard and go ahead with construction of DIY wind generator.

When the gust of wind blows you could harness power from your homemade wind generator and amass the power in your battery banks. Try building this small wind generator before you experience a bigger one.

How to make yourself a wind power generator at home? Read this informative article carefully and try building this on a small scale first then scale up when the experience goes well.

2. DIY Old Washing Machine Generator

Do you have access to flowing water? Perhaps a stream or a river? You can build this diy old washing machine generator, that uses water to generate lots of free power. Yet another way to use a renewable resource to keep you off the grid.

Here’s What You’ll Need:

• old smart drive washing machine
• a piece of flat aluminium
• 3 bridge diode
• 3 bolts
• thermal grease
• old inner tube
• bolts
• pelton runner
• 25mm garden tap fitting
• water supply pipe
• pressure gauge
• pressure switch/cut off
• plastic bag
• cover for electronics
• picaxe microchip
• old hand battery drill or grinder
• battery bank & inverter
• miscellaneous tools

This can generate about 800W that is stored in your battery bank. Nelson uses his to power his fridge, 2 freezers, house lights, toaster toaster, kettle, PC, TV and even a 180 hot water heater. That’s his entire home. Personally I would build a solar water heater for the hot water and save power for other things around the house. That’s just me! 🙂

3. How To Build A DIY Generator From A Lawnmower

So you know getting a backup generator is a great idea, but you just can’t afford to purchase one? Well, could you afford $50 give or take, for a small backup generator?

If you search around at yard sales or your local junkyard or landfill you should be able to pick up most of the bits required to build this DIY lawnmower generator.   There are a few extras you’ll likely need to purchase, but you could bring this in for around $50.

I have listed several different tutorials below that show how simple and affordable it is to build a basic generator out of an old lawnmower engine.

This is a really interesting and entertaining video tutorial. I think a lot of the build is overkill, but it does give you an idea of what can easily be accomplished with some cheap/free scrap parts and a little DIY skill. I particularly like the fact the generator was built onto the frame of the lawnmower, rather than removing the lawnmower engine and mounting it on another base.

4. How I Built a Wind Generator in My Backyard for $150

Lately I've been spending a great deal of time working on ways to generate my own electricity. It isn't a necessity for me yet, but someday being electrically self-sufficient could really come in handy. My interest started a while back when I stumbled upon a how-to article on building wind generators from treadmill motors and PVC pipe. It sounded easy enough, so I decided to try and design my own. This particular design can be built for $100-$150 if you are thrifty and can regularly generate 50-250 watts (considerably cheaper than a solar panel of similar power output). Here's how I built it for those of you who are interested. Additionally, please check out my new frequently asked questions page for more information not discussed in detail here.

Videos

Before we get into the details of how to build one of these, here are some videos of it in action. Each one demonstrates the behavior of the generator in a different blade configuration.

Long, thin-bladed design (best overall):

Six-bladed design (low startup speed and lots of torque, but slowest):

Wide-bladed design (good startup speed, but also very slow):

How does my wind generator work?

Every wind generator, whether they produce enough energy to power a city or to power a small radio, works on these same basic principles...

1. The wind blows

2. The generator's vane (tail) causes it to turn into the wind

3. Blades attached to an alternator/generator experience the force of lift and begin to spin

4. The spinning creates electricity for us to use directly or to charge batteries

Sounds pretty simple eh? Well, then how the heck do I build one? Read on...

Tools Required

Surprisingly, building a simple wind generator only requires very basic hand tools, and if you are desperate you won't necessarily need all of them. I used...

Jigsaw (or a hacksaw and a lot of determination)

• Drill
• (2) Drill Bits (1/2", 7/32")
• Tape Measure
• Crescent Wrench
• Pipe Wrench
• Protractor (to measure angles for the hub)
• Sandpaper (various grits)

Parts Required

I wanted to be as minimal as possible with my design (I'm poor), so I took the already simple designs from around the web and made them even simpler. All of the parts are available at any local home improvement or hardware store, and the entire setup can be constructed in as little as a weekend. Many of the parts you may already have lying around, and lots of substitutions can be made (instead of 1" steel pipe for the tower, you could use an antenna pole for instance). Here are the parts I used to build my generator...

• 10" x 14" Steel Sheet
• 10" x 1/4" Steel Nipple
• 1-1/4" Floor Flange
• 36" x 1" Square Tubing
• 1/2" Bore Circular Sawblade (for hub)
• 5/8" x 1/2" Arbor (to attach sawblade to motor shaft)
• (2) Hose Clamps
• 8" x 4" PVC Pipe
• 30" x 8" PVC Pipe (6" pipe works well too)
• A DC Permanent Magnet Motor (preferably Ametek 30V or 260V 5A treadmill motor)
• (8) 1/4" Bolts (with washers and nuts)
• (2) 1/4" Sheet Metal Screws
• 10-40 Amp Diode (the bigger the better)

All of the above parts (with the exception of the motor), can be picked up in a single stop to any large hardware or home improvement store. For the motor, the most popular types are old tape drive motors manufactured by a company called Ametek. The key is to finding a motor that puts out the highest voltage per RPM. For instance, the Ametek I'm using is rated for 30V at 325 RPM, making it excellent as an electricity generator (for a nice output comparison of the Ametek motors commonly found on eBay and other sites see TLG Windpower). However, pretty much any permanent magnet motor with a good volt/RPM ratio will do. Keep in mind that if you want to generate useful electricity, you will need to produce at least 12V to charge deep cycle batteries or run an inverter. My setup can easily achieve 300-400 RPM in a pretty average wind (for Oklahoma). These instructions assume an Ametek motor with a 5/8" shaft, but can easily be adapted to other motors (search ebay for "wind generator" and you will get a listing of lots of good motors).

Blade Construction

Arguably, the most important part of a wind generator are its blades. A lot of people like to carve their own blades out of wood or composite materials. However, for the rest of us, it's quite easy to make a good set of generator blades from common PVC pipe (and the efficiency isn't too bad either). A 2-3 foot section of either 6" or 8" PVC pipe will do the trick. Before we go any further, here are a few blade theory quickies...

• The longer your blades are the more "swept area" you have to gather energy from and easier your blades will spin in low winds, but the slower your rotation speed will be
• The tips of the blades always spin faster than the base, therefore one needs to take into account the "tip speed ratio" (TSR) when designing blades (there is a reason why old farm windmills will spin all year long at 40RPM)
• The power that can be extracted from the wind increases by the cube of wind speed (something like P=k*v^3 k=constant of wind generator, v=wind velocity)
• According to the Betz Limit, only about 59.3% of power can be extracted from the wind (so in reality P=.593*k*v^3, assuming k accounts for mechanical inefficiencies in the generator motor)
• The higher you get the generator off of the ground, the more wind it will be exposed to (the general recommendation seems to be 25-50ft., but I've had decent results at just 12ft.)

Cutting the blades for this machine is very simple. You will need to cut your PVC pipe into 3 sections, two 150 degree sections and one 60 degree section (I've attempted to illustrate this VERY APPROXIMATELY in my favorite CAD program--and by CAD program I really mean MS Paint). The red lines are cut marks. You will want to use a good tape measure and possibly some construction paper or newspaper to mark everything before you cut. The 150 degree angles will result in wide blades that start up in lower wind speeds, however this will lower the shaft turning speeds. In practice, you will find that the optimum angle could be anywhere from 75-150 degrees. The best idea is start out with a wide set of blades that you can always thin out later if you need to. Remember, measure twice and cut once!

After the blades are cut, I like to go ahead and smooth out all of the edges. If you want to follow aerodynamic theory, you can round the angled (leading) edge and flatten the straight (trailing) edge, but in practice I haven't seen this make much difference with PVC blades. So, you should end up with something roughly like these...

Hub & Blade Assembly

The next obstacle is building a hub to attach the blades to. There are many types of ways that this can be done. I have used circular sawblades and scrap steel disks. I recommend the sawblade approach, as they are readily available and easy to drill through. You can pick up an arbor with a 5/8" or 1/2" shaft at any homestore that will attach directly to the sawblade. Using the 1/4" drill bit, you will want to drill 3 sets of 2 holes 1" apart which each set 120 degrees from the next (this is where the protractor comes in handy, unless of course you are a Euclidean purist in which case you probably don't need a protractor). Here is a picture to make it more clear...

It's a pretty simple idea, but circular sawblades have worked out very well for me as hubs. Be sure and get some sort of rubber covering for the tooth edges and/or file down the edges as best you can, because the last thing you want is a hub of death flying at you if your generator decides to rip apart!

After our holes are cut out and we are confident of our safety procedures, we attach the blades to the hub (note that the hub pictured was cut from scrap steel, more pictures to come later)...

Tail & Pivot Assembly

Now we need to build a spinning platform for our generator motor to rest on. To achieve this, we will use some square tubing, a pipe nipple, flange, and small sheet of steel. Here is my "CAD" draft of what I wanted my tail & pivot assembly to look like, and a real picture of some of the parts I used...

First, I recommend cutting the sheet steel with a jigsaw into a nice design for the the tail (Note: this step is quite unneccessary and ONLY for aesthethic reasons).

We then want to make a cut down the center of the square tubing. The length of the cut isn't that important, but I recommend about a 9" cut (this will help make balancing easier later on). We may then slide the tail metal into the hole and use the 1/4" drill bit to drill and attach the tail to the square tubing.

We will then want to cut out a weather covering for our motor. A piece of 4" PVC slips perfectly over the Ametek 30V motor that I use. I cut it out like so (note the side hole for the motor wires).

Then we go ahead and paint it all up to seal everything from the elements. I wouldn't recommend painting on your front porch like I did though...

After everything is painted, we can now put it all together. Take the floor flange and put it under the square tubing about 6"-7" from the head. Mark the holes and drill them out with the 7/32" drill bit (or any bit close to but smaller than 1/4"). Attach with the 1/4" sheet metal screws. Use the metal straps to secure the motor and cover assembly, screw on the pipe nipple and you should have something like this...

Tower Assembly

Every wind generator needs a tower. I built mine from some pipe fittings from my local hardware store. If you already have an antenna pole or electrical conduit lying around, then you can skip this section. Here is my recommended parts list for a small extensible tower...

• (2) 5' Sections 1" Pipe
• (1) 1" Pipe Coupling
• (3) 1" Pipe Elbows
• (4) 18" Pipe Sections
• (2) 12" Pipe Sections

The tower base is pretty self-explanatory. Just hook up the elbows and pipe sections to create a base similar to this...

From there we can attach the 2 5' sections of pipe together to form a nice strong mini-tower for our generator to sit atop...

Finished Product

Now we are ready to attach the blades to the motor shaft with the arbor. You will also want to go ahead and attach some wire to the motor and run it to a device to power or a bank of batteries etc...

Here is a picture of the experimental design using six blades. It would spin in practically no wind, but would never get past 100RPM. At least it looked interesting!

Here is the battery bank I'm feeding into in parallel with solar panels. I am just using two 12V marine deep cycle batteries that can be found at any place that sells car batteries. I keep them in a standard plastic tub with a hole cut in the sides for 12V fans I cannibalized from a couple of old Mac G4s (not pictured). Be sure and put a diode between the battery and the generator so that current doesn't flow from the battery to the motor.

It turns out, cutting the blades a little thinner works better for my area. So I used the large white blades from the previous picture and thinned them out a bit. This resulted in the fastest shaft speeds as seen in first video at the top of this page:

5. This Open Source DIY Solar Generator Unfolds Like a Flower

Outdoor concerts should be loud, but the generators used to run them should be silent… and green. Enter SunZilla, an open-source, DIY portable solar generator designed to replace conventional diesel generators at outdoor events or in remote locations. The device was created by members of Bootschaft, a Berlin-based non-profit, who were sick of having to rely on diesel generators to power their open-air events. They set out to build an alternative that wasn’t so noisy, smelly, or endlessly thirsty for fossil fuel. The result: SunZilla 2.0.

At POC21, the team created SunZilla 3.0, a somewhat smaller, modular prototype that allows users to adapt the device to their own needs. The device’s solar panels fold out of a central module, and two separate modules house the unit’s electrical system and battery power storage. The new prototype’s simplified design, portable scale, and readily available materials make it easier to build and accessible to more people than its predecessor.

The SunZilla team envisions a whole range of eventual applications for their system beyond energy generation — such as water purification, cooling, heating, and telecommunications. To that end, the unit’s core modules and pinouts are clearly documented on Instructables, creating space for members of an open-source community to develop plug-and-play modules that serve their own needs, and to make these applications available for others.

Silent, renewable, and clean, SunZilla is bringing power back to the people.

References:

• DIY Old Washing Machine Generator:  https://homesteadlifestyle.com/diy-old-washing-machine-generator/ 
• Use Permanent Magnets to Create Free Energy Generators: https://energy-medicine-blog.blogspot.com/2020/12/use-permanent-magnets-to-create-free-energy.html
• Magnetic Generator: https://homemade-generator-tao.blogspot.com/2021/08/magnetic-generator.html
• Build Your Own Homemade Wind Generator Using Wind Energy To Create Free Electricity. https://www.brilliantdiy.com/build-your-own-homemade-wind-generator-using-wind-energy-to-create-free-electricity/
• How To Make A Magnetic Generator At Home: https://homemade-generator-tao.blogspot.com/2021/01/how-to-make-magnetic-generator-at-home.html
• How To Build A DIY Generator From A Lawnmower: https://knowledgeweighsnothing.com/build-a-diy-generator-from-a-lawnmower-total-project-cost-40/
• How I Built a Wind Generator in My Backyard for $150: http://www.thekevdog.com/projects/wind_generator/
• Tesla Generator Bueprints: https://homemade-generator-tao.blogspot.com/2020/07/tesla-generator-bueprints.html
• This Open Source DIY Solar Generator Unfolds Like a Flower: http://www.thekevdog.com/projects/wind_generator/

P.S. Best recommendations for DIY generators:

Plan of Homemade AC Generator:

✔ The Real Nature of Tesla AC Generator

Generates Energy-On-Demand: Easy Power Plan Will Change Our World Forever

✔ Combination of induction motor and alternator
✔ Combination between generators
✔ Or maybe called Overunity for the system. Mother Nature doesn't care about people calling or naming phenomena. Overunity or Free Energy, or Zero Point Energy (ZPE) are just a few different words