On the face of it, harnessing wind power to heat your house seems easy. In fact some of you might be doing it already, assuming you’ve got a wind farm somewhere on your local grid and you hav…
Does this have any benefit over just using friction to convert the rotation into heat? I suppose it would suffer less wear, but it also seems way more expensive.
As you said, friction would introduce more wear and maintenance. This gentleman’s idea is to attach a windmill to drive the rotary induction wheel, which would essentially be “free” heat energy, and an interesting hobby contraption. Entertainment and a sense of accomplishment is probably his main goal.
Its not a brand new idea, just a different application of the principle. Induction generators already exist, and they can indeed be used with windmills, but to generate AC current versus heat energy.
More power to this fun and crazy inventor. Maybe he can find practical and reproducible use for this effect. If not, he’s gonna have the most unique water heater ever invented. With this he could make a fully mechanical hot water heater that burns no fuel and uses no electricity. He would just have to make a mechanism to disengage a clutch at the top temperature.
Does this have any benefit over just using friction to convert the rotation into heat? I suppose it would suffer less wear, but it also seems way more expensive.
As you said, friction would introduce more wear and maintenance. This gentleman’s idea is to attach a windmill to drive the rotary induction wheel, which would essentially be “free” heat energy, and an interesting hobby contraption. Entertainment and a sense of accomplishment is probably his main goal.
Its not a brand new idea, just a different application of the principle. Induction generators already exist, and they can indeed be used with windmills, but to generate AC current versus heat energy.
More power to this fun and crazy inventor. Maybe he can find practical and reproducible use for this effect. If not, he’s gonna have the most unique water heater ever invented. With this he could make a fully mechanical hot water heater that burns no fuel and uses no electricity. He would just have to make a mechanism to disengage a clutch at the top temperature.
If you read comments to the original article, it is far from new idea and some farmers have used for a long time.