MacBlog

It worked!

We won’t be powering any homes any time soon but the project is one step (of many,many, other steps) closer to a final, electricity generating sculpture.

For the technical side of the “Arc” presentation I went through the Energy Conversation Worksheet — with the help of Chris — to actually quantify the amount of electricity that the project actually produced. Was really pretty exciting to see real-world, applicable results from my little masonite masterpiece. See worksheet results below:

Some observations:
It became immediately clear to me that the DC motor that I chose was not nearly a high enough RPM motor. There is a lot resistance. I could get a higher RPM motor but it dawned on me that I should not have used a geared motor at all. Am I right? The efficiency of the electromagnetic induction is only lessened by the gearing. I am going to have to revisit this to push the idea more.

Mechanically, there are more things I could do to prevent as much friction on the structure. For starters, there are nylon bearings for the shafts. In the future it would be a good idea to use a set of metal, ball-bearings to help spin of the shafts.

The rocking momentum could be helped along if there were more weight to the arc itself. The masonite is far too light and the lighter weight makes it difficult for the arc to capitalize on the potential energy.

In the United States, the average generating station was built in the 1960s using even older technology. Today, the average age of a substation transformeris 42, two years more than their expected life span.

The grid is struggling to keep up
Since 1982, growth in peak demand for electricity –25% every year.

From 1988-98, U.S. electricity demand rose by nearly 30 percent, while the transmission network’s capacity grew by only 15%. Summer peak demand is expected to increase by almost 20%
during the next 10 years.

If the grid were just 5% more efficient, the energy savings would equate to permanently eliminating the fuel and greenhouse gas emissions from 53 million cars.

If every American household replaced just one incandescent bulb with a compact fluorescent bulb, the
country would conserve enough energy to light 3 million homes.

(Click here for link to source material from the D.O.E.)

Here it is in all its glory. This is a small step towards a larger sculpture that would be able to function using its own generated electricity. My goal is to combine this project with my Mechanisms That Move class project (still in the works). The sculpture that I have in mind is a piece I did several years ago. I had always envisioned the piece as a kinetic sculpture and even did a little animation of how it would work.

Still working on the data worksheet to show how much electricity was generated.