The document discusses a project to design a playground swing set that generates electricity for rural villages without access to power. It notes that over 1.4 billion people worldwide lack electricity, and traditional power systems are often too expensive for remote areas. The swing set aims to provide a cheaper renewable energy alternative that generates power from kinetic energy of children playing, without needing water, wind or sunlight. It will supply power to the DC House system in a fun way for kids, avoiding losses from DC to AC conversion since it directly powers DC loads.
The document discusses a project to design a playground swing set that generates electricity for rural villages without access to power. It notes that over 1.4 billion people worldwide lack electricity, and traditional power systems are often too expensive for remote areas. The swing set aims to provide a cheaper renewable energy alternative that generates power from kinetic energy of children playing, without needing water, wind or sunlight. It will supply power to the DC House system in a fun way for kids, avoiding losses from DC to AC conversion since it directly powers DC loads.
The document discusses a project to design a playground swing set that generates electricity for rural villages without access to power. It notes that over 1.4 billion people worldwide lack electricity, and traditional power systems are often too expensive for remote areas. The swing set aims to provide a cheaper renewable energy alternative that generates power from kinetic energy of children playing, without needing water, wind or sunlight. It will supply power to the DC House system in a fun way for kids, avoiding losses from DC to AC conversion since it directly powers DC loads.
The document discusses a project to design a playground swing set that generates electricity for rural villages without access to power. It notes that over 1.4 billion people worldwide lack electricity, and traditional power systems are often too expensive for remote areas. The swing set aims to provide a cheaper renewable energy alternative that generates power from kinetic energy of children playing, without needing water, wind or sunlight. It will supply power to the DC House system in a fun way for kids, avoiding losses from DC to AC conversion since it directly powers DC loads.
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Swing Human Powered Generator
For the DC House Project
legend: overview of the study
problem of the statement
rationale/purpose of the study
significance of the study
INTRODUCTION
The DC House is a project designed as a solution for
electrical system distribution for rural villages that have no electricity. In order to accomplish this, the DC House relies on various types of power generators that include wind, solar, hydro, and human-powered generators. The scope of thisproject is to design a playground swing set that generates energy for the DC House. Figure 1-1 shows theoverview of the DC House system.
In addition to being a clean source of renewable energy, with
no emissions or use of diminishing resources, the human- powered play park provides access to electricity to the less fortunate. As of 2009,1.4 billion people do not have access to electricity [1]. Even with the increasing number of transmission lines to satisfy the world’s electricity demand, the high costs of infrastructure, operation, and maintenance make it virtually impossible to bring the traditional power grid to remote villages. In many cases, rural villages do not have the resources to implement the more traditional power systems for renewable energy, such as wind turbines, PV panels, or even water [2]. The swing set, will be a cheaper option, as well as it will be able to produce energy without the need of water, wind, or even sunlight. The swing set is a device that uses kids’ playtime to generate power, making it a healthy and fun way for kids and adults to generate energy for their homes. A human powered generator is not intermittent, and the swing set meets a very important piece of the DC House humanitarian effort for increasing rural electrification while promoting sustainability.
Human-powered generators have been designed and
manufactured for various applications. Some of the most popular human-powered devices on the market include radios, wristwatches and flashlights [3]. These devices are powered by rotating a crank or shaking the device. Another commonly used method with greater power output is the pedaling generator, which consists of a mounted bicycle which energy output is stored in a battery. A similar approach has been implemented using exercise machines that power themselves. By harvesting the energy from exercise equipment such as stationary bikes, and elliptical machines, the machines can power themselves, as well as generate power that can potentially power the gym. An example is RevRev, a company from Florida that sells commercial elliptical machines that are also sources of power. The kinetic energy of the user generates DC power and then sent to an AC converter and, finally, sent to the grid [4]. At Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, a similar project was developed for the newly renovated Recreation Center as part of a student’s master thesis and senior project [5]. A group of Cal Poly students also worked on a seesaw generator as part of their senior project on last year [6].
Even though the elliptical machines are a great step towards
producing renewable energy with environmentally friendly human-powered generators, it does not meet the design and manufacturing considerations for bringing electricity to remote villages and islands. Usually these rural areas won’t have exercise equipment or the funds to obtain it. Another aspect that the stationary bike or elliptical machine solution lacks is the fun factor. An exercise machine for generating electricity has that hard-physical-work factor attached to it. In addition, the elliptical machine power generating system employs DC-AC conversion, despite the fact that the majority of human-powered energy sources produce DC output power and most house appliances operate on DC power. Converting the renewable energy sources to AC power creates unnecessary power-loss and additional costs.
The nature of this Swing Generator project manufactures a
swing set composed of locally available materials that are environmentally friendly and inexpensive. In addition, the concept of a swing will make the power generation a fun process for the kids. Since the swing will be used to power the DC house, there won’t be any need for a DC-AC converter. A purely DC system with DC-DC converter will have a higher energy efficiency and be a more sustainable system for remote areas.
A more detailed consideration of the nature of this project
can be accomplished by analyzing a traditional swing structure and how this would affect the generation of power. A traditional swing consists of a steel frame where two chains are connected to the top of the frame using a hanger and a fastener. The bottom of the chains is attached to a swing seat using another fastener as seen in the left image of Figure 1-2. For this project, the swing will be designed using solid bars instead of the chain, in order to allow maximum torque to the thrust bearings and reduce the thrust loss in each chain link as seen in the right image of Figure 1-2.
Statement of the problem :
rural villages do not have the resources to implement the more traditional power systems for renewable energy, such as wind turbines, PV panels, or even water . The swing set, will be a cheaper option, as well as it will be able to produce energy without the need of water, wind, or even sunlight
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