Hello all! So i am just starting out and i am looking for some type of green generator. i need a generator that i can spin an axle or something and generate power. either wind/ water/ hand powered. My goal is to have a generator that i can get spinning with something(wind/water/hand) that will work at low speeds (hand) or really fast speeds (wind) or anything in between (water). i then want to be able to tie it into my house when i need more power. or the power has gone out. Anybody know any type of generators that can do something like this... or am i making it out of a car alternator or something? Thanks for the help and you time!

http://www.utterpower.com/

The question you are asking is much like 'what appliance do i get to heat my house?" before you can decide this you need to know how much power you need. Most people have no clue how much power they consume, one place to start would be your electric bill. How many Killowatt hours(KWH) did you consume last month? Some other questions would be:

Is this for full time or backup power? Do you have a suitable wind power site? Do you have access to water and height that you can legally access to drive a hydro turbine? Hydro would be the best if you can do it, but since most states claim the ground water rights, in a lot of places you cannot legally use it, even to extract electricity and let it pass on by(YMMV). Unless you have a steady source of hydro flow, any other power you are going to make will be sporatic, or if using a fuel source, VERY expensive. the advantge of a fuel source is that you can also extract the engine waste heat to use in a dwelling(co-generation).

For backup power a diesel or propane generator sized to meet your "get by" loads as diesel and propane store well for extended periods. I went diesel as I have a diesel tractor so the diesel fuel I store gets refreshed/rotated regularly. Sadly the diesel engines NewBoston linked to can no longer be imported due to EPA regulations. I built a generator with one of the 6HP engines and it is great, it just chuggs along meeting my average house load up to 3KW and making 6K-18K BTU per hour of waste heat that I harvest for hot water and domestic heat if needed.

No hand driven generator is going to make much power.

A very fit cyclist can generate about 200 watts for several hours on end or 300 watts for 1 hour.

Posted By patonbike on 02 Feb 2017 12:58 PM
No hand driven generator is going to make much power.

A very fit cyclist can generate about 200 watts for several hours on end or 300 watts for 1 hour.

Exactly!  There is a cool video on youtube of an olympic class athlete(sprint cyclist) making a single piece of toast.  It took every ounce of physical energy he could put into the bicycle coupled to a generator to drive a 700W toaster.  He ran out of energy and collapsed only producing a very lightly toasted piece of bread...

We very much take the amount of energy we consume for granted I think

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4O5voOCqAQ