Thanks for the comments. First of all I'm not certain of the flow and other details other than Dave here said they crunched the numbers before we "donated" my alternator and the potential power I guess is around 300 watts on paper. By the way, the angle of the photo makes it look like it's defying gravity, sorry, not true. We knew my alternator would not be ideal but better seeing it run than not and this is a cool little project. There can be a lot of tweaking yet and my suggestion is to lower the gearing and adjust the load, a more direct drive and better matched load will improve the efficiency. By the looks of the set up I believe he is trying to hit well over 300 RPM at the alternator. If I remember this alternator put out about 100 VAC (single phase) @ 300 RPM so trying to hit 120 VAC for light bulbs or other AC loads would make sense as to the very high gear up. Even with this arrangement (and he reports it really slows down the wheel, as it would) I guess he see's about 100 watts. Not sure yet how the power will be used and I think there is a plan for a small shed type enclosure to make a neat looking power shack. I'll post updates, the only time I saw this project was before the wheel was even mounted. I'm certain the owner took the attached photo that I got from Dave to scan. Fun stuff for sure. Dave B.