Seminar held for the Midwest Renewable Energy Association (MREA). Forestville, Wisconsin, May 2008.

Tags: wind turbine hombrew energy renewable sustainable

Living in the mountains is fairly exciting compared to living in town! The State Division of Wildlife was called, but they were many hours away and offered advice to the residents on how to cut the moose loose if they wanted to risk it. The tractor is to protect the guy doing the cutting of the hammock with a hatchet--he drove it down to the scene at 4:30AM the next morning and parked it there for a couple hours until the moose calmed down. Fortunately, they freed the moose without injury to any humans or mooses. PLEASE DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. As always, this was just another typical day at Otherpower.com headquarters: http://www.otherpower.com/

Tags: moose antlers tangled hammock trapped mountains colorado

Our 6 horsepower diesel backup generator charging a 48V battery bank at 2kw output with a home brew axial flux alternator. It's a very efficient system with many advantages over charging with a belt driven 5kw generator head through an inverter/charger(which is how we used to do things).

Tags: lister listeroid generator alternator axial flux otherpower

Here's another video of our steam powered back up generator on a snowy day producing 2KW. The fuel is lodge pole pine. The video shows the engine, and then a shot at the wall shows the 3 phase rectifer we use to rectify the 3 phase AC into DC for battery charging. I have a similar generator on my 'listeroid' 6/1 diesel engine, the knife switch allows me to select diesel, or steam - so the two systems share the same rectifier. The web page about the machine is at otherpower.com/steamengine.shtml

Tags: steam engine power otherpower DIY renewable energy

This short video shows our new steam powered generator. The engine is a 1903 6hp CB & C, coupled to a 1940 Lookout Boiler. We built the alternator much along the lines of our wind turbines. At 200 rpm it puts right at 2000 Watts into my battery bank. It's easy to sustain this burning local wood. Nice backup generator and loads of fun. Checkout the webpage about it all here: http://otherpower.com/steamengine.shtml

Tags: steam engine alternator wind turbine

A bit of video of otherpower.coms home made 20' diameter wind turbine on a breezy day. During this video you can just see it starting to furl - it's generating between 2 - 3KW most of the time. This is the machine that powers our off-grid home and shop. We also run a smaller 17' wind turbine and we have about 500 Watts of PV solar (although we did run for almost a whole year with just the wind turbine and often times it's more power than we can use). The system charges a 48V battery bank which we feed an inverter with. The inverter converts the 48VDC from the batteries into 120VAC to run our shop and home. Details about the construction of this machine are here: http://www.otherpower.com/20page1.html Home brew wind generators are great fun - check out our website and our discussion forum at www.fieldlines.com for more!

Tags: otherpower wind generator turbine solar power otherpower.com

Insane hillbilly child with her pet rooster (Tyson). They do funny rooster tricks - Sandy Nelson plays the drums.

Tags: hillbilly child rooster tricks otherpower.com

Dixie destroys a Giant Pumpkin. A couple of weeks ago my brother MattB needed me to baby sit his dogs (Dixie and Koko) for the day. Dixie is a border collie who always seems to find a task. She must have something to do all the time... They spent the day in our shop where we build wind turbines. Our good freind Zubbly grows Giant Pumpkins and he sent some seeds last year. Heather (my Mom) planted those last spring and gave my daughter Maya the largest pumpkin of the lot. It sat around here in the shop for a couple months and then.. when we had Dixie and she seemed kinda bored we decided to let her take out her anxieties on the giant pumpkin. Over the course of about 10 min she totally destroyed an 80 pound pumpkin. In this video we've compressed about 7 of those min. into about 3. Adam Brandon filmed this, check out adambrandon.com. He was up working with us on a DVD were making that shows how we build wind turbines. Too much fun!!!! Anyhow... sometimes otherpower.com spends its time building windmills.. sometimes it spends its time playing with the dogs. Watching dogs is usually better than watching television. One months worth of dog food costs about as much as your average cable connection.

Tags: border collie giant pumpkin otherpower otherpower.com dog trick