Hope y’all are still doing okay! Personally I’ve been a little off for a few months but that’s okay.
Now, I have, as I’m assuming everyone does (I live in a junkyard don’t blame me) AC you fan motors that I am looking to use as generators all connected to my compressor.
Took a fan apart and realized that… I have a generator!
Any advice on the ins and outs? I mean, it works and produces a solid half an amp according to the multimeter but how should I hook it up?
What else do I need? Guaranteed I have everything needed just need to know what to look for.
What I’m using it for? Maybe just some lights on the compressor? Maybe a phone charger addon or something? What would I need to do either aside from just hooking it up like I am about to do?
That makes sense, your best bet to make usable power would be an alternator. You could reuse the pulley system found in the car to make the physical hookup easy. There’s two things to regulate power - the voltage regulator you mentioned is the first. Many alternators have a built in voltage regulator. A particular example is the '63 - '83 GM alternator that looks like this that has a simple 1 wire output that’s regulated. I know some newer GM models have a regulator built in, some don’t. You’ll have to look up those and other makes on a car by car basis. The next thing for regulating voltage is a battery. A lead acid battery (car battery is this type) wired together with the alternator will smooth out the spikes and the dips in the voltage generated, but isn’t required. If you have lights for example, without a battery, they’d likely flicker or brighten/dim when the alternator load or RPM shifted. More sensitive electronics might not like the voltage changes. Once you got the alternator running then you’ll be able to use any car accessories like headlights, 12v USB chargers, stereo, etc. I found an informative forum post here about the problem as well.
https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/questions/88789/trying-to-use-a-car-alternator-for-a-power-source-not-for-car