This can be no more than speculation until we know what kind of potential output Bessler's wheel might generate, but when his wheel is proven and accepted, I think there will be many versions appearing, offering home electricity generators. I don't know how large a wheel will have to be constructed but I guess that something powerful enough to provide all domestic requirements will have to be quite big. Bessler's wheels were built very narrow but he did say they could be built with more than one on an axle, so we can imagine something with a lot more width on a single axle. The question then is what size of generator would be required to fulfil all of one household's demands, then we might have some idea of the size of wheel needed?
I found it difficult to discover on the internet, how much electricity a home needs. I realize of course that there are many variations in how much we use so some kind of working average would suffice. I note that to calculate it you need the total square footage of living space, disregarding open porches, garages, and basements or attics, plus you must list all electric appliances, including any AC, or heating, and the voltage and load of each in amperes or wattage. As a short cut I looked at standby electrical generators suitable for home use.
For about £24000 you can get a unit which will power a complete house of 4000 plus square feet, weighing about 8141 pounds and providing 200 kVA. I'm sure there are smaller cheaper units available but that is one I found. Its length is 11 feet, width four feet, and height about seven feet, a pretty big beast. We don't know how much a suitable Bessler wheel would weigh but its cost could be lower due to the simplicity of its design, compared to a diesel engine. On the other hand its size could be equally daunting and weight probably similar to traditional generators.
I know that some disagree with me, but let's consider what we think we know. The only weight described was one from the Merseberg wheel which was estimated to weigh about four pounds. That wheel turned in either direction and I remain convinced that it had duplicate mechanisms, one for each direction. In which case we can discard half the width and half the number of weights. Against public opinion I am also satisfied that there were five mechanisms and Bessler said the weights worked in pairs, so lets assume five pairs of weights at four pounds each.
We are left with a twelve foot wheel of six inches diameter, and ten weights of four pounds each, totalling 40 pounds, capable of turning at 50 RPM. To bring the total weight/power ratio up we can increase the width but we don't know if it is possible to increase the mass of the individual weights. We could extend the width of the wheel to say five feet, so multiplying the six inch width by ten and increasing the number of weights by ten gives us a total weight of 400 pounds rotating at 50 RPM. In the traditional example quoted above, it includes the alternator so we'd have add that to the wheel which would make the comparative sizes roughly the same, although the weight could be less. Even so I think the comparison works quite well and I think a wheel turning at that speed with that amount of weight would be more than capable of producing enough electricity for our individual needs.
I have deliberately ignored any flywheel effect possibly inherent in Bessler's two-way wheels as we know too little to form any judgement on the likely outcome.
I have deliberately ignored any flywheel effect possibly inherent in Bessler's two-way wheels as we know too little to form any judgement on the likely outcome.
JC
Hi John,
ReplyDeleteThat would be the very thing I would build a wheel for. Although there will be many (and will grow) uses, the primary use, I think, will be for electricity generation, especially in places where other generation techniques would be impossible.
Can I have mine now, please?
JohnnyD
I would build a very efficient generator , the generators they sell to the public are a waste of space , if you want to do it right build it yourself .
ReplyDelete- Ealadha
John,..Your last paragraph does not make logical sense.Surely you mean,'a twelve foot wheel of six inch cylindrical depth.'
ReplyDeleteI am all in favor of a large wheel in an unused basement room somewhere which would not be inconvenient,..anything to be free from the electricity power grid.
Oh, boy! Here we go again!
ReplyDeleteI thought that we had laid this issue of using Bessler's wheels for electrical power production to rest MONTHS ago, but it's back yet again! It's harder to kill than a VAMPIRE!
At that time, I calculated that in order to output 15,000 watts continuously one would have to have, literally, a very large DRUM containing TONS of lead that would be big enough to put in a barn. Someone objected and said that the average home only needs about 8,000 watts during peak consumption. Fine, then the drum is about half as long. It's still a monster mechanism that EACH homeowner would have own and for which he would be responsible for the maintenance and repair. One might equally propose that the solution to our dependence on fossil fuels and the high price of gasoline is for everyone to drill an oil well in their backyard and then, assuming anything actually came out of it, set up their own cracking and distillation equipment to refine their own gasoline for use in their car. LOL!
Finding the solution to Bessler's wheels, REALISTICALLY, should only be done to solve a irksome historical mystery and, perhaps, to provide a demonstration of Einstein's Energy / Mass Equivalence Principle at work.
My house uses 20kWh per day of energy
ReplyDeleteYou're right Trevor, sorry, I changed what I wrote so many times I think I got confused.
ReplyDeleteI know what you wrote Techno and I'm happy to read what you have to say, but I'm allowed to disagree with you, aren't I?
JC
The most important quantity to increase, if it is possible to do so, is rotational speed. (Remember that Power = torque × rotational speed).
ReplyDeleteModern energy-storage flywheels can rotate at 20,000 to 50,000 rpm or even higher, with some achieving rim surface speeds around Mach 2.
Unfortunately the gravity powered wheel will never be a fast turning wheel.The free fall of mass is subject to the acceleration rate from zero which is 32ft/second /second.
ReplyDeleteThe only other option is to gear up the revs. as they do with slow waterwheels.
From a theoretical point of view, if a mass falls from standstill through one meter on the descending side of a (very light) wheel, it will accelerate to a velocity of about 4.43 meters/second. Now, if was possible to somehow "switch off" the action of gravity on the ascending side, so that it could start its next fall still at 4.43 meters/sec, it would then reach 6.26 meters/sec at the end of that fall, then 7.67 meters/sec, and so on; i.e. the wheel would continue to increase rotational speed.
ReplyDeleteBut I would agree that switching gravity off and on again would have to be done extremely quickly for a fast turning wheel. In any case I have no idea how to do it!
There's one thing I do know,the wheel is going to make it's appearance soon,hopefully before the end of June.
ReplyDelete"I know what you wrote Techno and I'm happy to read what you have to say, but I'm allowed to disagree with you, aren't I?"
ReplyDeleteTypical JC. WHY do you disagree with Technoguy? You don't know, that's all there is to it. You WANT Bessler's Wheel to be usable for home electricity generation, so it 'must be so', and to hell with logcial, factual discussion.
What is Trevor Dauncey on about? The wheel is going to make its appearance soon? Because YOU say so?
Even when somebody finally creates a computer program which goes through thousands of possible solutions to the wheel every day, and eventually finds the solution that way, it still will be of little use to the average person for electricity generation, for exactly the reasons Technoguy stated. Which ones of them are incorrect John, or do you just want to 'disagree' without even being able to explain WHY?
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteI disagree, anon, and that is that. There is not the space here and anyway I don't feel inclined to go through my own reasons, surely I can disagree without having to lay out my reasons if I don't want to. I disagree with technoguy's assumptions and his findings, nothing personal, it's just my opinion.
ReplyDeleteJC
John,..Why was my comment removed by a blog administrator.I said nothing offensive or insulting.
ReplyDeleteWhat I said was because of what I know beforehand which gives me the confidence that I have.
Is this blog administrator actually one of the anons that are so insulting?
ReplyDeleteSorry Trevor, I was trying to amend my own comment, and I have to delete it and rewrite it, but I accidentally deleted yours by mistake! All I wanted to do was change the word 'findings' to 'opinions'.
ReplyDeleteJC
Oh LOL!,..That quite a coincidence,because I was pretty annoyed by what the anon said,because he mis-understood the spirit of my statement about the impending appearance of the wheel.
ReplyDeleteI don't want to offend anybody.
JC wrote:
ReplyDelete"I know what you wrote Techno and I'm happy to read what you have to say, but I'm allowed to disagree with you, aren't I?"
You certainly are, John. That's what we're here for...to share OPINIONS.
I recently redid some of my calculations on how big a Merseburg type wheel one would need to output 8000 watts continuously (since some previously thought that my preferred output of 15,000 watts was not really needed for an average home). I wound up with a drum 20 feet in length by 12 feet in diameter that contained 10,240 lbs of lead! And, yes, one would need a barn to house it.
However, if one could use very energy efficient lighting / heating / cooling in his home, then, perhaps, one would only need a drum that outputted 4,000 watts continously. That would allow the drum to be reduced to only 10 feet in length or, if it was kept at 20 feet, to only use 5,120 lbs of lead. Still rather cumbersome.
I'm convinced that the Merseburg wheel's CoM was rotated onto the descending side by about an angle of 15 degrees from a vertical line passing through the axle and this is one of the reasons its torque was so low. Now, IF the wheel's internal components, once we determine them, can be redesigned to keep the CoM directly HORIZONTALLY displaced from the axle onto the descending side (that is, displaced by 90 degrees), that would boost the torque by a factor of about FOUR. In this case, one could get his 8,000 watts with a drum that was 20 feet long, 12 feet in diameter, and which only contained 1280 lbs of lead or eight weights each with a mass of 160 lbs. Now this certainly BEGINS to sound "do-able" to me. Each weight would actually be a 20 foot long lead rod with a weight of 160 lbs. One could also just use a 20 foot long steel pipe which would probably weigh about that much. If Bessler is to be believed (I DO!), then the radius of a drum is not that important and one might be able to shrink that 12 diameter drum down to, say, six feet without any loss of torque (this, however, requires that the lever lengths stay the same as were used in the 12 diameter drum). Then one would have a unit 20 feet long by 6 feet in diameter with a total weight mass of 1280 lbs. I can begin to imagine something like this housed in a shed and continuously driving an AC generator.
Of course, the above assumes that Bessler's design, as found in the Merseburg wheel, CAN be made more efficient. I tend toward believing that this can NOT be done otherwise Bessler would have done so to impress prospective buyers. But, then again, maybe it can be done and Bessler never got around to it. In any event, it's probably still way too early to completely dismiss the idea of these wheels being used for home electrical power generation. Right now, however, we have to concentrate of finding out, as exactly as possible, HOW Bessler made HIS wheels work.
Correction:
ReplyDeleteAbove I wrote in the second paragraph from the bottom:
"In this case, one could get his 8,000 watts with a drum that was 20 feet long, 12 feet in diameter, and which only contained 1280 lbs of lead or eight weights each with a mass of 160 lbs."
That should have read:
"In this case, one could get his 4,000 watts with a drum that was 20 feet long, 12 feet in diameter, and which only contained 1280 lbs of lead or eight weights each with a mass of 160 lbs."
Sorry about that.
Thanks technoguy, I guess we're still trying to hit targets in the dark, as long as we don't know how the wheel worked, and your thoughts are well written and persuasive, and for all we know you are right and I am wrong.
ReplyDeleteJC
I foresee one problem with any wheel that is big ....
ReplyDeleteTHE NOISE.
Can you imagine how far away it would need to be sited so that you could sleep.
A bessler wheel can run silently because you can swing on a swing without making noise ,because apparently it is possible to get a swing going perpetually , that is what Hal Puthoff was told , that it is possible to get a swing swinging perpetually .
Delete- Ealadha
Good point, anon. I can imagine the heavy thudding could be felt in the house. I expect they will have to find a solution.
ReplyDeleteJC
The banging noise had nothing to do with the power output,as Bessler said,so it's quite feasible to use pads or a folding chain which would have zero noise.
ReplyDeleteSorry I can only say this because I know how the wheel works,which I will reveal soon.
This statement seems to upset some people,but what else can I say.
Actually, I don't see noise as a major issue with these wheels, when we finally replicate them.
ReplyDeleteTrue, Bessler's earlier ONE directional wheels were noisy probably due to the rubbing together of internal parts (tightly fitted levers against radial drum supports as the weighted levers swung away and then back again to their rim stops) and his latter TWO directional wheels would make a clattering sound as their gravity activated latches engaged and then disengaged an inactive retrograde turning sub wheel's weights. But, for a modern replicated one directional wheel with precisely fitted components, the single greatest source of noise would be the sound produced as its massive weights landed on their rim stops near a CW rotating drum's 3:00 position. Simple padding material can be used to virtually eliminate this while the use of other sound deading materials inside of a drum would reduce other sound emissions down to nearly zero.
Don't forget that the heavy weights can be substituted for springs which would drastically improve it's E/W efficiency.
ReplyDeleteMine must be different to yours , there is no substituting weights for springs in my bessler wheel , i don't have it working yet , but i hope to have it working soon .
Delete- Ealadha
Heres a page on the infamous wiki listing electricity consumption by country.
ReplyDeleteThe reference is the CIA world factbook.
The average, for the whole world, is 306 watts per hour.
If we could get those wussies in canada and norway and finland and iceland to turn down their thermostats, we could get the average down.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption
Thanks Doug!
ReplyDeleteJC
De nada, really, and I stumbled on the CIA world factbook. (Cue the Mission: Impossible theme.)
ReplyDeleteIf your wheel works (I'll be the first to admit I'm wrong), it would be practical in those countries that are way down on the list - Afghanistan ,Rwanda . It would only supplement the others, unless the aforementioned improvements could scale it up.
Yeah, 4,000 watts continuous output might not seem like alot by Western standards, but it's enough to power an entire small village in a Third world country or one of their "hospitals". It can keep their cell phones charged and provide home illumination at night. There's even enough left over for a computer or flat screen television set.
ReplyDeleteGuys...
ReplyDeleteWe want to avoid using batteries I assume. If not, we can always use 2 - 4 truck batteries to cummulate energy and reuse it in peaks /even 20.000 kW peak/, so in that way our wheel needs to deliver continously something about 2 kW ... or even 1 kW in summer time. In winter we just run additional wheel/s/ used only for heating. So... set of 2 - 3 smaller wheels is good enough for a house.
Good Luck
R.
What a really awesome post this is. Truly, one of the best posts I've ever witnessed to see in my whole life. Wow, just keep it up
ReplyDeleteused pcb equipment