I had something in mind like the circuit on that page for collecting the charge, but I guess I don't understand the effect that's being used to charge up the long wire. Is it coming from EM waves, using the wire sort of like an antenna?
What I had in mind would actually use the wind to do some work, separating oppositely charged ions from one another. It wouldn't be free energy or perpetual motion, just a new way to use the wind with a solid-state type generator machine.
What I don't know is how many volts a segment of PVC pipe would build up in the wind, or how many nanoamps you could expect to get from it. I assume you would take it through an inductor of some kind in a buck-boost type arrangment to collect charge in a capacitor and do some battery charging. [ Parent ]
I imagine you could wind a piece of bare wire around the PVC pipe, sort of in a wide spiral with lots of room between the turns, as a way to collect the charge from the surface of the pipe. I am guessing that these "radiant energy" collectors being described are collecting the static charge from the insulation, but they require the charge to pass through the insulation which might be reducing performance. I would guess that the strongest static charge would really be on the surface of the insulator so it would be best to collect it from there. Also, the use of a big (4" diameter or so) pipe would give the wind lots of surface area to work on.
Perhaps, though, the bare wire on the outside would interfere with the static collection by returning some charge to the air. So, maybe you'd need to coat it with an insulator or bury it slightly in the PVC by using some glue to dissolve the surface just below the wire.
Anyway, just more random thoughts... if I get some time it'd be fun to try to build one of these.[ Parent ]
