I was an electric motor rewinder for 11 years. Cut the individual coils apart so that you have 2 leads sticking up from each coil. This gives you flexibility to connect them in various configs and polarities. For max output, connect all coils in series in the SAME POLARITY, i.e., into coil, clockwise thru coil, out of coil - into next coil, thru clockwise, out, etc., etc. Also keep all your magnet polarities the SAME - all N or all S, no matter which. This will give you max DC voltage, but minimum amperage. You can also play with connecting them in series-parallel groups, to get lower voltage at higher amperage. It should work surprisingly well. Apply a load and monitor the temperature of the windings. This will ultimately be your limiting factor. Connect some light bulbs or a coil of nichrome resistance wire until your winding temperature reaches the safe limit of your insulation, usually 105 degrees Centigrade, abt 220 F. Measure the current output at that point and de-rate it by 10% and use that as your max safe load. Connecting a capacitor shunted across the output to accumulate your voltage will help to smooth out the RIPPLE CURRENT (may as well learn the correct terminology) in low-energy setups (w/motor used as-is) but its not necessary or helpful at all if running full tilt boogie, modified as per how I have explained.

excellent starting point for those who are a bit intimmidated by these projects. we want to learn but sometimes the learning curve is so high ppl just give up. thnx for explaining the basics and generating your own tiny amount of free energy is very rewarding. one can do this just to power some LEDs for extra low impact light sources.

Prashanth Manjunath That would be the CAPACITOR that stops the flickering of the light. What this guy doesn't know is that if he hooks up a larger capacitor he could get much more power. Notice after he hooks up the Capacitor the light not only stops flickering but also gets brighter. He doesn't know much but he is learning and I give a huge thumbs up for him. I love seeing people learn and experiment with science.

I really appreciate he way that you explain the capacitor as holding the light on longer and the AC current output as a flicker, etc. Thoroughly enjoyed this video!

This was very informative. Solving energy issues on a personal standpoint has been on my mind for quite a while. Thanks!

Thank you! Nicely done, with the addition of some of the comments shared, I'm on my way to generating electricity.

I'm surprised by the support of the comments from the viewer. They I believe experts. Thanks to them . I always read all this stuff are fake but you proof something to who stick to the physic law

My ceiling fan vawt turbine works very well when I get winds at night. When solar panels are inoperative. The fan motor has only been made secure in the last few weeks. We had goodish wind after and my batteries for my lighting system were trickle charged nicely. On average I get 8ish hours a night of lighting for my flat. Using them no differently than if I was running them off the grid. Your video is a fantastic tutorial in how to convert a fan. Well done and keep them coming.

Great vid, Kurt. I also like your conversational style, you're very down to earth and honest. I've bookmarked your page and will look for new vids as they happen. Keep up the good work!

I just learned a whole lot from this site and I thank everybody for their opinions. I'm going to start working on this electricity myself

The most useful video regarding mp generator, thank you.

this is awesome demonstration of Ceiling Fan to Wind generator conversion... thanks for sharing this...

Informative. Thank U. Also, About the tune up's on the racing cars, U took me to another time & place. I remember those days too.

Thanks very much for this! I have a ceiling fan salvaged and this may be a project for me - to make a small VAWT for power at my allotment, which gets fair amount of wind and strong gusts at times.

Very good video, also want to add that I recommend leaving the capacitor attached and use a voltage regulator downstream of the bridge rectifier for whatever voltage the user is wanting to charge.

Was just watching your video about ceiling fans as generators. A vertical axis wind turbine is called a Savonius cylinder. I live in a flat open windy place. I made a turbine by cutting a plastic herbicide barrel in half down the middle. I've always wanted to power something with it. I've had to put it back together a few times after a bad storm because running without a load it spins so fast that the centrifugal force spreads the turbine apart to the point where the axles come out of the bearings. There certainly seems to be some free power to be had. The beauty of the Savonius cylinder is that you don't need a tailfin to keep it facing the wind...it spins no matter which way the wind comes from. It always spins the same direction as well. It just depends which way you overlap the barrel halves. RPM and torque will vary depending on the amount of overlap. It's easy to make a small model out of a tomato juice can or something similar. Just so there's no confusion...it is cut down the middle standing upright; not through the side.

I just (TODAY) used a small ceiling fan, and 24 small hard drive magnets to make a little generator. The fan had 8 large copper coils and 8 small copper coils. I stacked 3 small hard drive magnets together to make one strong magnet (a total of 8 strong magnets). I angled them ALL in the same direction (as opposed to trying the North Pole, then South pattern). I’m lighting-up (6) 5mm LED bulbs with very little effort. I have NOT gotten any actual current readings, as of yet, but it works WELL!

SOME GOOD INFO, Nice Video Thanks, David

Nice job and great demonstration performance! Thanks!!!!

Just got a fan and will try this with magnets from an old harddrive. Tx for the vid!

Thanks for the video, it certainly presents some interesting thoughts.

Well, for low voltage, low watt systems, this would be ideal. Using smaller magnets, you should be able to pick them up fairly cheaply through some hobby sites or stores. Suggestion, the unused coils, get them out of there. Do not need them being passing electron traps that would be taking away from your final output. Also too, using a savonus rotor as your drive, would mean that the generators can be stationary with one at the top and one at the bottom of the rotor as the savonus does not need to face into the wind as it is always facing no matter what direction the wind comes from. The savonus begins to produce usable energy at low wind speeds with a 5 mph breeze being enough to start producing usable energy. That means you would not have to have contact strips/brushes to transfer power and the units can be hardwired together and even placed in a parallel circuit to produce even more current, thus more watts. Simple regulator circuit to keep the voltage stable and you should b e able to produce enough to maintain an already charged car battery fully charged if you are only using low voltage devices. Or assist a solar panel to maintain a healthy voltage.

HI ! Even if you are speaking english (i'm a frenchy ;-) ), your video is the first one i''ve ever seen which explains clearly how to convert a ceiling fan to a wind generator. So thanks a lot.

nice so I can now uses an old ceiling fan for a small wind power electrical generator. My own home windfarm

dear friend ,though its not a new idea your presentation is very impressive.Just open a wind generator you will see like these type of principle windings and other types also.every one cannot see every tutorial videos like this in internet due to search matter.so any one who see this video i am 100% sure hey will like it.very good thanks a lot.

hello and a very nice presentation. I am from Europe and for my bachelors degree I made a windmill with coil and neodymiummagnets. These magnets on size for the ceiling fan can be found in Germany. They are not cheap and they break easely. The firm has neodymiummagnets in so many sizes and send to all the world. The firm is called Supermagnete. You can glue them on your ceiling fan with TEC 7. But Be Carefull they brake easelyHope this was some usefull information to this video. Greetings Luke Belgium (I don't work for the firm or dont have pattents... just discovered it on google)

Awesome my friend.

Very educational. Thank YOU!

You could use it for a wind gust indicator just as it is. Make it attractive and weatherized, put it on the roof, run the wires down to a led display inside your house, and when the wind blows it lights up your led display.

Great video, Thanks!

iv been loosing volts when i use any metal around my generator .i made plastic housing to attache magnets too .much more power

you could use this design to power a electric bike, i know its been done and all but this sparked my inventor side... good video, thank you..

thank you for your videos.

I dont really know much about electric...... but now that i learn how to generate powers... thanks alot

very smart !

interesting overview. I can see why ceiling fans are not optimal for the time and effort to convert to generators. but if you like the housing or blades and the bearings and wire up your own, its a nice starting point.

thanks so much! now all we have to work on is getting things to run on less power, i installed a mini split air conditioner it runs on 6 amps, the fans in it run on dc voltage. compared to my old system the cost to run is halved!

I think your slow speed are the outside coils, the most number :) Nice video.

Awesome video

Great video,very informative. In your video you mention a few times that they aren't worth the cost because of the magnets. As a Prepper I disagree (while also respect ion your opinion) because they can mean the difference of hot showers (for instance) if/when the grid goes down. The best use for these are for charging and keeping one's off-grid batteries charged rather than actually powering a device/appliance. Living in the south ( ;) Al-ler-ba-ma,lol j/k we're not all inbred morons) wind power isn't really a realistic concept,but are good when combined with solar panels and/or water wheels. But loved your video and the amount of information you packed into it. ;) "Keep on keeping on."

This is great to learn. If you want an awesome American made unit look at Missouri Wind and Solar

great ideal thanks for the lesson.

Great video! please post more!

good job

Dang. As if I don't have enough tinkering going on already.... lol..

Take computer hard drives and remove the magnets. Very strong and free! Perfect for ceiling fan generator.

Ok you did, great. Love the video

Great job.Thanx

This is very Good video, and you explained it vividly, I am so able to understand clearly coz I have a question on my mind how it was possible that my old Clip Fan has Electric shock when I was twisting it, then I tried for an experiment if it's really has an electrity using 220 Bulb, Receptacle and Wire... It is actually on my KZfaq Channel, I was really surprised. Then now I know why is it working... Thank for Your explanation... I am a BSIT graduate I don't have an idea about this so thanks for this video sir. Hope you can visit to channel too... I came from Philippines. God Bless Sir.

very interesting!!! :)!!! Thanks!!!

Thank You great idea, for people in the Third & Second World, and refugee's all over the World.

Thanks I think I will try this

nice to learning

Cool wow got me thinking!

Good job. I am working on one of these.

One problem with using a ceiling fan is that it is not designed to be weather-proof. The only way that this could work reliably in the long term would be to locate the ceiling fan generator in a weather-proof housing to isolate it from rain and snow. A vehicle alternator or generator would be a much better choice.

Thanks, Thanks, Thanks; Very Educational.

In the '60's, as kids we built and raced slot cars. A standard tuneup to an electric motor would include removing a few windings to reduce resistance, draw more current and go faster. Race cars don't require longevity. We also exchanged any brass bushings for ball bearings, balanced any spinning parts like the armature by filing metal off the low side, indicated when the heavy side spins down while the armature is supported by two razor blades on edge. Filing the armature also made it more uniform in it's circumference, allowing us to shim the magnets in closer using paper etc..and upgrading the brushes to silver or gold, made a difference. Near the end of my first electric car experiences (now I drive a Chevy Spark EV) we played with braking, by adding a loop to the speed controller so that it sent a small current from a 9 volt battery, backwards through the cars DC circuit, when the speed controller was in the UP position. We'd replaced the transformer that was producing power for the tracks, with individual car batteries on a trickle charger so each lane had a dedicated power supply.

you said youre not an expert, but you did a damn good job. any others haters got videos that can do better. put up or shut up.

well done

When you say 'bashed the magnets out of this' (implying free)... and then 'expensive magnets' I had to chuckle a bit. 1) if you can avoid it dont directly hit a magnet, it will kill some of its properties. and I was curious if the orientation of the magnets tot he outer body and one another mattered. Like figure out + and - obviously both sides will stick to the body but maybe alternate those inside. But then you covered this... I like the way you approach theory and walk through it but I was hoping for more of a hot wo. you have a ton of vids on this out there.

I want to use that with a Turbine Attic Ventilator... I think your next video should be using that... I would also use four magnets with that stator... Nice work!

more powerfull magnets will up the voltage for each rpm. thicker winding will have less internal resistance, but will fit fewer windings and result in a lower voltage.

amazing

It would be fine and work well if you just needed emergency lighting. Just dump the power into a 12v battery and use only led lights. I would use a setup like this for my workshop and storage shed.

I induced a coil this morning!

nice meter - hard to find (new) good mirrored-scale multimeters these days at reasonable cost (especially ones with low uA movements). Kids laugh at me when I tell them to get an analogue meter as well as a digital one - then, sooner or later, they come running back and ask to borrow one :)

this is a good technical orientation

Very well deduced dude

appreciated, thank you

.... I was just staring up from my bed looking at my ceiling fan.... and I just started wondering if the little bugger could do the job.... lol.... and here I am... well lets see ...

Real nice thank you! I need light i just start burning stuff! lol! just kidding!

awesome

Suggestion: what if we connect it to a rotary floor wheel powered by foot- we place it on top of the wheel and with a belt mechanism we click on the peddle (like sewing) so it continues to rotate. This suggestion is good for temp lighting in case of a storm and loss of electricity.

with the wires, theres a set for low speed and a set for high speed then a earth. you should join the high and low speed wires so you get 2x output, or like 1.75x but nice vid, im gonna go make a vertical windmill gen using this as the alternator

OMGOODNESS! O.o That ROCKS!!!!!!

good vid

The coils aren't wound clockwise, counterclockwise, clockwise, etc.. They should all be wound the same direction. There will basically be 2 circuits... one set of coils that is wired directly to the source voltage, and the other set is wired with the capacitor. They are set on the motor in an alternating pattern.. so the first coil will be in the capacitor circuit, the next without the cap, the next with the cap, the next without etc. The capacitor side of the circuit causes the current to lag 90 degrees out of phase with the other side of the circuit. This creates a rotating magnetic field. The rotating magnetic field moves past the squirrel cage in the stator, inducing a current in the squirrel cage. This creates a magnetic field in the squirrel cage that is opposite in charge to the magnetic field in the rotor, causing the stator to be attracted to the rotating magnetic field of the rotor. The stator will always rotate slightly slower than the rotating field in the rotor. This is called slip. This is because if the stator was moving at the same speed as the rotors magnetic field, than the bars of the squirrel cage would not be getting crossed by the rotors field, and no current or field would be produced in the stator. Now that you know how a single phase induction squirrel cage motor works, you can better understand and design a generator from its components.

Great idea! that could used it with a creek or waterfall..

Thank you for your incite on this conversion process, I was using a ceiling fan for generator for a fall fest gam at my church, with the use of ohms resistors I hope to create a strong man game that will need more RPM's to light up a series. Does this sound correct?

In my opinion with the demo, if you hook it up right you can make a bulky hand crank light.

Everyone is a critic... Great experiment, Great Video, you gave me a few terrific ideas... Thanks!

nice

. You could obtain a high voltage from your fan motor by using a number of small curved magnets equal in number to the pole faces on your fan . Remove the inner set of coils if you like as they would only add to the back emf if connected up or if some of the coils are shorted out. Shorted coils will make the generator hard to turn so either see that the inner set is kept totally open andn one of the coils is shorted or leaking to the frame. You will have to obtain magnets of such a length that each magnet fits just across the the pole face withiin the coil. the magnet s hould not span the coils but just the ple face. These magnets must be fitted to the part where the shaded armature was. YOu will have to devise sime way to fix the magnets to the moving part so that there is a space between the pole face and the magnet of about visiting car thickness. The magnets must be alternating in polarity around the coils. . Neo magnets are not necessary and are very expensive and difficult to obtain in the right size and shape.ordinary ceramic magnets are quite strong for the purpose. With this arrangemt you willl obtain a voltage more than a hunfred and fifty. All the best.

you can use pulleys to bring up a higher revolution speed to generate a higher voltage also, Big on the blades and small on the generator

Thank you Kurt it was great demo I got some thing out of it as will most people and for any of you that want to put this demo down just to show you think you know more don't just keep your f."...... Mouth shut and make your own demo don't put this one down

keren sekali sangat bermanfaat untuk invasi ke depan

Finally I can bake a cake when the power goes out.

good one and you'd need to be a non-electrician to think of this one as an electrician i would have to re engineer the parts as the magnets should spin with brushes to add DC excitation and coils would be stationary, and the Bearing would not be used from a walmart priced fan but still cool!

YES< The best magnets are from dead HDD ! I Have a lots of them

cool

The capacitor was for the reversible feature of the original fan. Connecting it to the OUTPUT of the diode bridge will smooth out your signal by charging like a battery on the peaks of power generation and discharging on the valleys. That capacitor is of a low value for the purpose that it was intended. If you get hum in audio applications like radios, stereos or TV's, that are connected to your generator, you can use a capacitor of a higher value. Here's where it gets tricky. Capacitors can explode if connected with the wrong polarity, if it's rated voltage is too low for your generator's output. Say your generator has a maximum output of 85 volts AC at full speed. This will be an RMS or Root Means Square rating. This is a little mathematical for this discussion but to suffice it to say you can add an average of 50% to that voltage at peak power on each cycle. Most volt meters only read average voltage. Converting this AC output to DC with a diode bridge and adding a filter capacitor to this would make the peak output about 127 volts DC. If you did this to your wall power, you would find that you would have almost 175 to 180 volts DC. To be on the safe side, you should use a capacitor that is rated at least 50% above this in it's voltage rating. Unlike the capacitor in the motor, electrolytic filter capacitors have polarity like batteries. BE SURE you connect positive to positive and negative to negative. The micro-farad rating of the capacitor isn't important in this respect but understand, as with any battery, the bigger, the better. If you use a 500 micro-farad @ 200 volt DC capacitor, it will work twice as good as a 200 micro-farad @ 200 volt DC one. The more micro-farads, the better the filtering action. Also be aware that professionally designed windmills have mechanical speed regulators on them so as to not go over rated voltage or speed to avoid spinning out the bearings during a wind storm. One other thing your viewers need to be aware of. You can NOT connect a DC output to an AC rated appliance without damage. If you are connecting it to charge a battery bank, you should have some kind of regulator or controller to avoid a fire or battery damage. NEVER try to make connections to the generator while it it spinning. Even though they use AC in the electric chair, high DC voltage across your heart will stop it faster. One last thing. You can NOT connect the raw AC output of the generator to ANYTHING that is AC powered as the FREQUENCY of the signal is governed by the speed of the fan and is too unstable. Other than that, your idea is pretty ingenious and, I think, could be built upon to become something useful in some applications.

The capacitor will smooth your output plus raise the voltage somewhat.

Talk about electro nugens coming out of the woodwork. Did you ever add more magnets? Thanks for the video

windmill in the garden to a rectifier to large battery all wired into dollar store landscape lights this will work

I acknowledge how much editing it takes to create, edit and publish a video. This was as clear as muddy water. This guy has the same problem as me, he writes a book. Write down what you want to say and stick to the script. Try and keep it basic for most of us.

That's a Neat idea to charge the battery off the ceiling fan wind dc generator so you can hook the inverter off the banks of batteries so you can invert the dc power ac power to power your home with

Using parts of the fan and alternator from a car you would probably make a good wind powered generator

one issue with converting an induction moter to a generator is coging. coging can be mitigated to some degree if you divide the outside coils into 3 groups and connect them the coils in each group in series with each other such that the voltages will add. the output after three phase are rectified will be much smother but youll never get rid of the iron core roter coging with the magnets. just hope to smoth it out some with placing magnets in such a way to take advantage of the three phase windings.

you should build this for a charging booth or station with a vertical blades you could start a power stations for remote locations in far to get to vacationing get aways or hiking or to charge your cell phone, lap tops or ac power cord plugs or small plugs station outdoors with electric car charger for a parking space far from the grid.