Thread: Conserving Electricity

Dear Sir/Friends,


I was just observing the functioning of a wind mill to generate electricity(Conversion of mechanical energy to electrical energy). If so, my question is , Can't we generate electricity from fan while it is running so that the mechanical energy while the fan is rotating can be converted into electrical energy ?

Please correct me if iam wrong ...



Thanks & Regards,
Anish

You could, but you will get less energy out than is being consumed by the fan motor.

Yes Sir but the energy consumption can be reduced to some extent.. Will the energy which we conserve be that less ?

Regards,
Anish

Yes, the energy will be less. If not, it would violate the laws of thermodynamics.

You aren't going to get more electrical energy out of a fan than you put in to run the fan, that makes no sense.

Yes Sir but the energy consumption can be reduced to some extent.. Will the energy which we conserve be that less ?

yes but so will the efficiency of the fan. you may as well reduce the fans efficiency some other way and save that energy in the first place.

Originally Posted by Chrispen Evan

yes but so will the efficiency of the fan. you may as well reduce the fans efficiency some other way and save that energy in the first place.

The method you're thinking of simply is not practical.
Consider a windmill: Energy is converted from the motion of air into electrical energy. In what you describe, you're trying to convert electrical energy into electrical energy.
You can plainly see the problem, there.

The purpose of using the fan to generate electricity is to find a renewable source of available energy that can be tapped into.

Instead of using electricity, let's use steam.

You build a boiler and a turbine attached to valves (It doesn't matter what you use to create heat, be it nuclear, fossil fuel or wood. Just make heat) that put pressure on the blades of the turbine. Now, connect that turbine to a magneto.
Fire it up: You are now converting the stored energy in wood or coal or the nuclear energy of fission into heat energy and then into electricity. You will always suffer a loss, there from your system eve though no energy is destroyed. No energy is saved, either- it simply changes form.

To use an electric fan to make electricity does not convert any renewable source of energy, it uses the same energy you're trying to make more of- since you lose some electrical energy in the process of using the fan, you have less electrical energy to convert into electrical energy. It's a fail/fail scenario no matter what.