Generator Blog

after all, you will use me some day.------- generator

     Generators are widely used in all kinds of machineries, people uses it to generate power and transports the produced electricity to consumer when they run into an emergency of electricity shortage. When people buys this kind of device, they should consider what kinds of generators they should buy, a brand new one or second hand one?

    There is a shortage of generators in the local market following the power outage in Sharjah, with people hiring the much-needed power generator from neighbouring Dubai and as far as
Abu Dhabi, industry sources say.

    A sales manager from Sharjah International Airport Free Zone-based company said a lot of people were enquiring about renting generators as there are no stocks for small- and medium-sized ones in the market.

   “We are not in the renting business, we sell generators and we did not notice any change in our business due to power shortage in Sharjah, but companies involved in the hiring business are benefiting a lot,” he said.

   “People don’t buy generators because they think this (the power shortage) is temporary and hope to use rented generators for maximum of two to three months. Big companies are buying new products, while smaller companies usually go for rentals,” a source from Al Binayah Building Materials Trading in Sharjah, said.

   “Of course, in the long-term perspective, it is cost efficient to buy a new generator,” he said, adding that the company has recorded a slight rise in sales after the crisis broke.

   A salesman from Sharjah-based Champions, which deals in generator renting, said at the moment, the company had only medium and big size generators from 40 KVA onwards for hiring.

  “We have run out of small generators and have only medium and big sizes. A 40 KVA generator will
cost you Dh4,500 per month as rent and Dh47,000 if buying a new one,” he said.

  Sami Jaber from Casablanca Generators in Sharjah said sales increased by 10 per cent compared to two months ago since the power shortage outbreak in the emirate. “Units from 30 KVA to 200 KVA of capacity are in big demand,” he said.

  A source from Al Qudrah Used Building Machines and Equipment said sales have significantly increased in the last three days. “Our business is at least 50 per cent up now. People are hiring all kinds of units — from 20 KVA up to 600 KVA. With a 20 KVA generator, you can power a small office or residential air-conditioner, while a 650 KVA unit can provide power to a 10-storey building.

  ”In fact, our suppliers are so happy with us because of the brisk business. We hardly have time to place new orders. People are not even asking for prices, let alone bargain, and they are ready to pay in advance. At the moment, we do not have small generators, all are rented out,” he said, adding that the boom is expected to last till September end.

  “We receive more than 100 calls a day from Sharjah, enquiring about all capacity generators, especially from the Sharjah Industrial Area,” a sales manager of an Al Quoz-based heavy equipment trading company said.

  “We have shortage in rentals and our stock is finished. At the moment, we have only one generator left. People are ready to pay double the price and we have a long waiting list,”
he said.

  “People normally prefer to hire used generators rather than buy new ones because the latter involves a lot of maintenance work,” he added.

  Some, however, said that the current boom could lead to a price hike in the rental and sales market alike. Currently, prices are 10 to 15 per cent less than they used to be back
in 2006.

  “Our suppliers are already hiking prices because of the demand. Many people are confused now and they are considering in investing in new generators. If the situation persists, prices will shoot up,” a Dubai-based sales manager said.

  Ashras Allam, general manager of the Abu Dhabi-based Al Masaood (Power Engineering Division), said his company had been getting a lot of enquiries from Sharjah for the last three days.

  “Though they ask for quotations only to buy new generators, there is a possibility that sales will go up because we know that it is very difficult at the moment to hire a second-hand generator as stocks are running out even in Abu Dhabi,” he said.

   When something is wrong in the circle, it wil cause evertything runs into a bummer. Choose the one which suits you best.

In an attempt to simultaneously save the environment and prove that opposites attract, Xcel Energy and Abengoa Solar have joined forces to produce the world’s first hybrid solar-coal power plant.

Located near Grand Junction, Colorado, the $4.5 million Colorado Integrated Solar Project intends to show that solar power can reduce the negative ecological impact of coal-fired power plants, considered to be the dirtiest of dirty power.

For a basic explanation on the seemingly complicated process, we defer to the good folks over at Earth & Industry:

In a traditional coal-fired power plant, coal that has been pulverized into a fine dust is burned to heat water until it becomes steam. The steam then turns the blades of a large turbine, which turns the generator and produces electricity. But if the fresh water is heated before it enters the boiler, less coal is needed in order to make the steam—and that is the principal behind Xcel’s Energy brand new solar-coal hybrid power plant in western Colorado.

No official word yet on a whether or not the obvious names for the new technology—be it “coalar” or “soal”—will take off.

One thing’s for sure—some environmental outlets consider the energy marriage to be a bit like putting lipstick on a pig.

According to Energy Wise:

As NASA scientist and leading climate expert James Hansen writes in his recent book Storms of My Grandchildren, “If we want to solve the climate problem, we must phase out coal emissions. Period.”

Hansen and others have shown that only if global coal emissions are completely phased out by 2030 could atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide be stabilized at between 400 and 425 ppm (which certainly seems unlikely from our current level of about 392 ppm), most likely averting some of the more dire climate scenarios. The U.S. currently gets about half of its electricity generation from coal; we better get started if we want that 2030 target to be remotely realistic.

Preface: scientist has produced soft power rubber, when fold it, it can transform eighty percent of mechanical energy into electrical power. We can use this kind of material to make shoes, clothing accessories, and daily used stuff, even we can implant it into body as power.

“This looks like a pair of shoes, actually it is a charger”, if we remake the movie nation-produced 007, maybe we will have this sentence in the movie, the shoes which is transformed into a fan in the movie has been out of date.

Now scientist has manufactured a kind of tiny generator which we can put it in the coat, fix it under the shoe pad, maybe years later, it is not that funny when we pull a piece of wire out of shoes and use it for charging mobile phone, nowadays with the development of micro technology and material, people can charge for device at any time.

At the early of 2008, professor Wang from Georgia university of science and technology makes a kind of material which can produce power, at the best case, this material can produce 80 MW at every square, under the microscope, we can see every group of electric material’s structure likes two curve cones, when the material is folded and shook, two cones are compressed together and produce electricity.

The theory for this generator is piezoelectric effect, just like lighter. In 1880s, curie and his brother found some crystal can transform between mechanical energy and electric energy. Now in our daily life, there is large amount of piezoelectric material, from quartz to small component in watch, from aerospace to deep ocean.

Piezoelectric material has a big family, they have the common aspect which is that the centre of electric charge is not always at the same position inside lattice, although it appears that it is neutral, but the micro deformation of shape can change the distribution of electric charge, and in macro aspect, it turns out to be current.

According to the assumption of Macarl, those devices which can product electricity with micro deformation can produce electricity through the deformation of lung when somebody is breathing, and they can supply power for pacemakers.

Now the researchers hasn’t tested the biological safety of this generator on animals yet, if it can charge for mobile phone or iPod, it can be counted as valuable products. With more and more low energy-consumption in electric device, we are becoming more and more reliable to portable equipment, this kind of soft generator can bring us more and more freedom in using portable equipment.

In electricity generation, an electrical generator is a device that converts mechanical energy to electrical energy, generally using electromagnetic induction.

The reverse conversion of electrical energy into mechanical energy is done by a motor; motors and generators have many similarities. A generator forces electric charges to move through an external electrical circuit, but it does not create electricity or charge, which is already present in the wire of its windings. It is somewhat analogous to a water pump, which creates a flow of water but does not create the water inside. The source of mechanical energy may be a reciprocating or turbine steam engine, water falling through a turbine or waterwheel, an internal combustion engine, a wind turbine, a hand crank, compressed air or any other source of mechanical energy.

Today, the technology of electrical generator is to come to maturity, but its historic developments are complicated.

Before the connection between magnetism and electricity was discovered, electrostatic generators were invented that used electrostatic principles. These generated very high voltages and low currents. They operated by using moving electrically charged belts, plates and disks to carry charge to a high potential electrode. The charge was generated using either of two mechanisms:

Electrostatic induction

The turboelectric effect, where the contact between two insulators leaves them charged.

Because of their inefficiency and the difficulty of insulating machines producing very high voltages, electrostatic generators had low power ratings and were never used for generation of commercially-significant quantities of electric power. The Wimshurst machine and Van de Graff generator are examples of these machines that have survived.

In 1827, Hungarian Anyos Jedlik started experimenting with electromagnetic rotating devices which he called electromagnetic self-rotors. In the prototype of the single-pole electric starter (finished between 1852 and 1854) both the stationary and the revolving parts were electromagnetic. He formulated the concept of the dynamo at least 6 years before Siemens and Wheatstone but didn’t patent it as he thought he wasn’t the first to realize this. In essence the concept is that instead of permanent magnets, two electromagnets opposite to each other induce the magnetic field around the rotor. Jedlik’s invention was decades ahead of its time.

In 1831-1832 Michael Faraday discovered the operating principle of electromagnetic generators. The principle, later called Faraday’s law, is that a potential difference is generated between the ends of an electrical conductor that moves perpendicular to a magnetic field. He also built the first electromagnetic generator, called the ‘Faraday disc’, a type of homopolar generator, using a copper disc rotating between the poles of a horseshoe magnet. It produced a small DC voltage, and large amounts of current.

The Dynamo was the first electrical generator capable of delivering power for industry. The dynamo uses electromagnetic principles to convert mechanical rotation into a pulsing direct electric current through the use of a commutator. The first dynamo was built by Hippolyte Pixii in 1832.

A dynamo machine consists of a stationary structure, which provides a constant magnetic field, and a set of rotating windings which turn within that field. On small machines the constant magnetic field may be provided by one or more permanent magnets; larger machines have the constant magnetic field provided by one or more electromagnets, which are usually called field coils.

About the size of a small moving van, the diesel generator can process several types of refuse, including paper, plastic, Styrofoam, cardboard, woodchips and food waste.

The biorefinery uses two different processes to create fuel.

The machine separates food material into a bioreactor that uses the yeast ferments to create ethanol.

Other materials go to a gasifier and are converted into propane gas and methane, which then fuel the diesel engine that creates electricity.

The system is designed to run on diesel oil for several hours until the gasifier and the bioreactor begin to produce fuel, researchers said.

The Army commissioned completion of a prototype and is considering it for future use. According to its builders, the system lowers the potential danger and expense of transporting fuel and waste and helps cover the tracks of mobile military units because it destroys trash–the evidence of their presence.

The generator is also an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional diesel generators, they say. Using biomass as a fuel is less polluting than oil because plants absorb carbon dioxide, according to scientists at Indiana-based Purdue.

Also, they note that the system is efficient, with the first prototype producing about 90 percent more energy than it consumes.

Maybe the deployment of these “gizmos” might just help turn the tide on the bad guys in the “war” zones: imagine a “Portable, trash-powered generator” to provide combat units with unlimited power for medical equipment usage in cases where the choppers can come under heavy fire and risk being shot down - they can be treated in-house - less travel risks, less risk to supply lines/routes…

sounds a perfect product，when is it built? Maybe in the future….

 A wind power generator is a machine that uses wind energy to produce electrical energy. It captures the winds power and converts it into mechanical energy that rotates the blades of a motor to produce electrical energy. Wind generators help produce thousands of megawatts of electricity. They are also a very popular power solution for individual farms. They are perfect for large areas with good wind speed.

Wind generators have been in use for a long time in the form of windmills or wind turbines. Years ago, when electricity was not invented, wind turbines were used to pull boats and pump out water.Surprisingly the first use of the wind machines was for grinding grains as early as 200 B.C in Persia. It was also introduced in the prosperous and powerful Roman Empire in 250 A.D. The year 1900 saw the maximum number of windmills being used in Denmark. Almost 2500 windmills were installed to provide the much needed mechanical load to pumps and gave a peak power of 30MW.

Even now, the terms, wind generator, windmill, and wind turbine are used to refer to the same device.

What are the advantages of using a wind generator? The advantages of a wind generator are many. Let’s look at a few of them.

Environment-friendly: Wind power generators prove to be environment-friendly in two ways:

They do not emit harmful gases in the atmosphere nor do they leave any harmful residual component.

They do not use any fuel to produce electricity, hence helping the cause of the environment.

Power-saver: Wind generators are an alternative power solution. They do not use any non-renewable sources of energy, thus helping in times of energy crisis.

Economical: Though the initial cost of setting up a wind generator seems high, the cost of generating electricity in the long run becomes nil. So basically, you will be getting electricity absolutely free after a few years.

Independent option: Wind generators do away with the dependence on power plants and the government for electricity. With a wind generator in your land, you have your own power plant for life.

24/7 power: With wind generators, you can say bye to power outages forever. You will get continuous, uninterrupted power supply for your entire house and land.

Power storage: A wind generator also allows you to store power for use later. This feature makes it an amazingly lucrative power solution.

With more and more fuels getting wasted and used, there are very few options remaining. Bio-fuel is one of the options and to add to it is the use of solar panels for driving motors and making electricity. The third option is harnessing the wind power. So build a wind generator today and do something good for your home and for our environment.