Selfsufficientish.com

If you just want to feed both to a battery pack, then all you need is two diodes (one in each of the positive leads). Hook the anode of one diode to the solar, the anode of the other to your wind generator. Tie the two cathode sides together and attach to the battery positive. It isolates the two po...

So, since when did capturing mechanical energy from wave motion become a new invention? BTW, I've invented a new invention for cleaning boots. You set the dirty boots in a specially-designed patent-pending tray, at the edge of a lake. The waves coming into the tray move around the boots and wash awa...

I don't know if you are into do-it-yourself, but have you done any research into "rocket stoves"? They are wood-burning stoves that have the capability of being 2-3 times the efficiency of a standard wood stove. That's valuable if wood is a scarce commodity. The basic concept can be modifi...

StripyPixieSocks wrote:Do tha Americans know something we don't? Every other blog is about survival these days... are they showing Mad Max over there alot or something?

Dear oh dear...

You'll need all that stuff if you don't want to get jumped by Mister Dead. ;)

I have a free site that highlights some experiments that I've conducted with exploring more efficient methods of cooking for "third world" countries. Many people in the world are still using cooking methods that have changed little in a thousand years. I would like to encourage people to t...

Someone caught a wind generator on video when the braking system failed, in a high wind. It didn't look like it was going that fast until you looked at another generator. One of the blades broke apart, then the imbalance caused the whole thing to explode. There must be a great deal of power stored i...

I looked at the sales page that began this post. It describes an evacuated tube system, but I didn't see anything that looked special about theirs. In general evacuated air collectors are more efficient and heat the water to higher temperatures. The vacume in th4e tube insulates the same way a vacu...

The main problem with the Segway that I see is that it solves a problem that doesn't exist. By that, I mean, if you add just one more wheel(non-powered) to it, then there's no need for accelerometers, gyros, computers, and the power rating of the motors could be halved. The two powered wheels in fro...

Another thing to keep in mind with using compressed air. When you compress a gas, it gets very hot, which raises the pressure. Then when it drops back to room temperature, all that energy is lost, and the pressure drops. There really isn't a good way to reclaim that energy, in most cases. That hurts...

Thanks for the link. Those babies look pretty small, and not something that's meant for highway use, but around an airport, where they could be kept charged(with air), they could really be practical. Interesting. I wonder how loud they are? Air motors tend to be hard to "muffle", since the...

The air-powered car. Someone brought this up on a MySpace science forum, a while back. I looked up the info on this and the claims were incredibly out of line with reality. You couldn't store enough compressed air for 5 minutes of running down the road, let alone the claims of over a 100 mile range....

There are big problems with putting solar heating systems on the roof. The weight(especially for a hot water system), the possibility of roof leaks, the lack of accessibility for maintenance, the inability to change the angle of the collector with the seasons, and the costs involved with installatio...

Thanks ina,
I get it now.

Can somebody please tell me who "Margo" is, and how do I get her name and picture off my posts and replace it with my own?

I just signed up. I'm interested in alternative energy, especially solar cooking. I've done a number of experiments with low-cost, home-made, solar cooker designs, and also "rocket" stoves(wood-burning). I'll be posting the results of some of my experiments at, http://www.alternative-energ...