I concur with this. Also why not have something similar. Turbines in sewers and waterways. We have the ability to be 100% powered by electricity. Batteries are our bottleneck
In some sense this would be recuperating energy rather than generating new energy because we use energy to pump water to your toilet in the first place. So it’s not really a power source on its own (at least in most places), it’s more akin to regenerative braking where you can capture some of the energy you spent before.
If this was something that you were going to do it would not make sense to have small turbines in every toilet. Likely the energy used to manufacture every turbine and ship it would dwarf the energy output.
Not only that but maintenance would be a big concern! Millions of devices with moving parts subject to solid waste would be hard to keep running (and there’s a good chance it would plug your toilet more often). If this were a valuable source of power you would want to do it downstream and use a single larger turbine for harvesting energy from many houses. This would likely be more efficient as the larger turbine would likely have less friction proportionally, and there would only be one point for maintenance.
You can of course collect energy from lots of sources to generate small amounts of electricity but generators are expensive devices to produce and the amount of energy you would get out of these in the device’s lifetime would not offset that initial energy investment! That’s where things get really tricky.
Your initial idea of putting a wind turbine on a car is potentially something that can work, but with an important caveat! You won’t get more energy than you put into the system, and if the wind turbine is generating energy it’s taking it away from the car’s kinetic energy. It would basically be a form of regenerative braking where you would use drag to slow the car down but recuperate some of the kinetic energy from the car for use later. Regenerative braking on an electric car will be more efficient for this because wind turbines can’t capture energy as efficiently as an electric generator directly connected to the spinning axels, and the other factor that’s a huge win for normal regenerative braking in electric vehicles is that you don’t need many additional parts for the car. The wind turbine idea means you have to build a wind turbine, but you know what’s awesome? When you spin an electric motor it becomes an electrical generator instead, so you can just use the electric motor you already have for it!
Also for what it’s worth… The wind turbine for regenerative braking mind not be a thing, but in Formula 1 they have used fly wheels to store kinetic energy instead! So basically instead of spinning a fan, they have a big heavy wheel that they can use the momentum of the car to spin up (while slowing down the car at the same time), and this wheel can later be used to speed up the car again later.
With all of these regenerative systems it’s important to note that you don’t get more energy than you put in. There are losses and due to conservation of energy you’ll never be able to recover more energy.
That said wind power is also a thing and there’s all sorts of cool ways to take advantage of that… Like sail boats, and these cool things!
I assume it’s cost. You’ll get pica amounts of charge. So it’s not Worth it. When you can just cover every roof with solar. Enough wind turbines, water way turbines, bio plants and geothermal.
So, you’re saying… Fuck off with every minute possible option that creates energy?
You really think the multi millions of flushed toilets couldn’t produce any relevant energy? Isn’t that a failure of physics and engineering versus humanity?
Average toilet flush is 5 litres which weighs about 5kg. The amount of potential energy depends on the height difference between the source and the turbine. If it’s right in the toilet you maybe have a meter of height, so you could potentially generate 5 kg * 9.81m/s^2 * 1 m = 49 Joules of energy from a single toilet flush. The average house uses about 1000kWH of energy every month, which is 3.6 billion joules. If you could capture the energy with 100% efficiency you would need about 73.5 million toilet flushes to recuperate the amount of energy for one household in a month. If each toilet is used 10 times a day you would need 7.35 million of these devices. If they cost $1 each this would be a $7.35 million dollar project. If a kWh is 25cents, the average monthly power bill for a house is roughly $250, which means in order to see a return on this investment in terms of energy costs these devices would have to work without maintenance for about 294 thousand years. You can gain more energy with a larger height difference, so if you used a turbine further downstream, say 100m down, it would generate more energy… For 100m it would take 2940 years. This is not factoring in the costs to build and ship these devices, and naturally such devices would probably cost more than a dollar and break down and they would also not recover 100% of the energy (maybe 30% if you’re lucky!)
What does fuck off with every minute possible option that creates energy mean ?
I’m not an engineer and don’t understand how things work. You can create power but it’s like Kinect energy. Maybe the flush of a toilet is more energy than you’d get from a turbine. You’d need to make sure nothing solid blocked the device. Would need to get everything tiny to fit and yeah would be miniscule power.
It’s definitely doable but I think the output would just be lower than turning off a light or something.
I’ve no idea but someone will know.
I think something like a wind turbine in a car would be more useful. Just solar panels on a car would be useful. You might get 5/10 miles extra range. I think that’s more useful than a fraction of a percentage from toilets.
Now rivers/ canals and waterways. That might give you enough power that it’s worth it. Again maintenance would be an issue. Boats fish humans potentially. Maybe the odd shopping trolley and escooters
I concur with this. Also why not have something similar. Turbines in sewers and waterways. We have the ability to be 100% powered by electricity. Batteries are our bottleneck
Seriously, why does everything need to be on huge implementation.
Imagine a power turbine just behind every flush of every toilet on Earth?
Why can’t that be a thing?
I would need a legit physics PhD to explain to me why that can’t happen.
In some sense this would be recuperating energy rather than generating new energy because we use energy to pump water to your toilet in the first place. So it’s not really a power source on its own (at least in most places), it’s more akin to regenerative braking where you can capture some of the energy you spent before.
If this was something that you were going to do it would not make sense to have small turbines in every toilet. Likely the energy used to manufacture every turbine and ship it would dwarf the energy output.
https://what-if.xkcd.com/91/
Not only that but maintenance would be a big concern! Millions of devices with moving parts subject to solid waste would be hard to keep running (and there’s a good chance it would plug your toilet more often). If this were a valuable source of power you would want to do it downstream and use a single larger turbine for harvesting energy from many houses. This would likely be more efficient as the larger turbine would likely have less friction proportionally, and there would only be one point for maintenance.
You can of course collect energy from lots of sources to generate small amounts of electricity but generators are expensive devices to produce and the amount of energy you would get out of these in the device’s lifetime would not offset that initial energy investment! That’s where things get really tricky.
Your initial idea of putting a wind turbine on a car is potentially something that can work, but with an important caveat! You won’t get more energy than you put into the system, and if the wind turbine is generating energy it’s taking it away from the car’s kinetic energy. It would basically be a form of regenerative braking where you would use drag to slow the car down but recuperate some of the kinetic energy from the car for use later. Regenerative braking on an electric car will be more efficient for this because wind turbines can’t capture energy as efficiently as an electric generator directly connected to the spinning axels, and the other factor that’s a huge win for normal regenerative braking in electric vehicles is that you don’t need many additional parts for the car. The wind turbine idea means you have to build a wind turbine, but you know what’s awesome? When you spin an electric motor it becomes an electrical generator instead, so you can just use the electric motor you already have for it!
Also for what it’s worth… The wind turbine for regenerative braking mind not be a thing, but in Formula 1 they have used fly wheels to store kinetic energy instead! So basically instead of spinning a fan, they have a big heavy wheel that they can use the momentum of the car to spin up (while slowing down the car at the same time), and this wheel can later be used to speed up the car again later.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy_recovery_system
With all of these regenerative systems it’s important to note that you don’t get more energy than you put in. There are losses and due to conservation of energy you’ll never be able to recover more energy.
That said wind power is also a thing and there’s all sorts of cool ways to take advantage of that… Like sail boats, and these cool things!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_ship
I assume it’s cost. You’ll get pica amounts of charge. So it’s not Worth it. When you can just cover every roof with solar. Enough wind turbines, water way turbines, bio plants and geothermal.
We don’t actually need it.
I think that’s the issue
So, you’re saying… Fuck off with every minute possible option that creates energy?
You really think the multi millions of flushed toilets couldn’t produce any relevant energy? Isn’t that a failure of physics and engineering versus humanity?
Average toilet flush is 5 litres which weighs about 5kg. The amount of potential energy depends on the height difference between the source and the turbine. If it’s right in the toilet you maybe have a meter of height, so you could potentially generate 5 kg * 9.81m/s^2 * 1 m = 49 Joules of energy from a single toilet flush. The average house uses about 1000kWH of energy every month, which is 3.6 billion joules. If you could capture the energy with 100% efficiency you would need about 73.5 million toilet flushes to recuperate the amount of energy for one household in a month. If each toilet is used 10 times a day you would need 7.35 million of these devices. If they cost $1 each this would be a $7.35 million dollar project. If a kWh is 25cents, the average monthly power bill for a house is roughly $250, which means in order to see a return on this investment in terms of energy costs these devices would have to work without maintenance for about 294 thousand years. You can gain more energy with a larger height difference, so if you used a turbine further downstream, say 100m down, it would generate more energy… For 100m it would take 2940 years. This is not factoring in the costs to build and ship these devices, and naturally such devices would probably cost more than a dollar and break down and they would also not recover 100% of the energy (maybe 30% if you’re lucky!)
What does fuck off with every minute possible option that creates energy mean ?
I’m not an engineer and don’t understand how things work. You can create power but it’s like Kinect energy. Maybe the flush of a toilet is more energy than you’d get from a turbine. You’d need to make sure nothing solid blocked the device. Would need to get everything tiny to fit and yeah would be miniscule power.
It’s definitely doable but I think the output would just be lower than turning off a light or something.
I’ve no idea but someone will know.
I think something like a wind turbine in a car would be more useful. Just solar panels on a car would be useful. You might get 5/10 miles extra range. I think that’s more useful than a fraction of a percentage from toilets.
Now rivers/ canals and waterways. That might give you enough power that it’s worth it. Again maintenance would be an issue. Boats fish humans potentially. Maybe the odd shopping trolley and escooters
Its because machines are very inefficient in practice. You would lose more energy than you gain.
Maybe you should look into perpetual motion machines and why they don’t work.