Me and my partner are going to be doing an project which will measure different ways of producing electricity, but we're not sure how we're going to measure the amount of power we produce. We won't be dealing with kilowatts or anything... where can we find a simple meter that will just measure watts per hour? Does a DC motor produce DC current? Does an AC motor produce AC current? If anyone can help, thanks. I'm kinda confused 😛
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How to measure watts per hour?
- Thread starter Justin218
- Start date
Build a power meter for $5
A DC motor runs off DC voltage, using DC current.
A DC generator creates DC voltage, the waveform of the current drawn from it will change depending on what kind of circuit it is attached to.
For AC, replace DC with AC in the above statements.
I'll give you a better explanation after I get some sleep.
A DC motor runs off DC voltage, using DC current.
A DC generator creates DC voltage, the waveform of the current drawn from it will change depending on what kind of circuit it is attached to.
For AC, replace DC with AC in the above statements.
I'll give you a better explanation after I get some sleep.
How much power are you going to be generating?
If you will be generating less than about 500 W, and will be able to turn it at about 2000 rpm, a car alternator would probably be your best bet. Regulated DC output, making measurement of curent and voltage easy and accurate.
Correctly connected to a car battery, the alternator will use energy from the battery to start up.
The problem with using motors, is that they often don't use permanent magnets - without the magnetic field you will not be able to generate any power. The car alternator has a circuit which will allow the battery to energise an electromagnet, but once you start turning it, diverts power from the alternator itself.
You'll find it difficult to measure accurately the ouput of an AC generator, unless you have specialist test equipment (a multimeter won't do the job). Even a simple DC generator could confuse a multimeter, because of the constantly varying voltage/current.
If you will be generating less than about 500 W, and will be able to turn it at about 2000 rpm, a car alternator would probably be your best bet. Regulated DC output, making measurement of curent and voltage easy and accurate.
Correctly connected to a car battery, the alternator will use energy from the battery to start up.
The problem with using motors, is that they often don't use permanent magnets - without the magnetic field you will not be able to generate any power. The car alternator has a circuit which will allow the battery to energise an electromagnet, but once you start turning it, diverts power from the alternator itself.
You'll find it difficult to measure accurately the ouput of an AC generator, unless you have specialist test equipment (a multimeter won't do the job). Even a simple DC generator could confuse a multimeter, because of the constantly varying voltage/current.
Windshield wiper motors and anti-lock brake pump motors have permanent magnets for field excitation. They are high torque and not so easy to turn from the output shaft though. What are you going to be driving your generator with? There is an infinite amount of resources out there for your project, just post more specifics.
We're going to build a scale steam power plant, but make sure we're far away before we get it running, heh. I was thinking we could use something like the meter outside a home to measure the total watt-hours we produce. What we're mainly trying to do is test the efficiency of different fuels in a steam power plant. About how much power it will produce, not really sure. Have not decided on what size to make it yet.