h a l f b a k e r yAssume a hemispherical cow.
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You have a bunch of horses that pull little carts behind
them
all day while they're grazing. These carts have generators
and
removable battery packs on them charged up by the wheels
turning.
When a battery gets charged, you pop it in your electric
vehicle and drive around.
I'm figuring
say, 20 horses grazing all day would be enough
to
power one car. You could of course get more horses and
power the whole house. Not sure how many that would
require.
As far as how much power you'd get compared to solar
panels, well. Hmm. The horses would be prettier. And
unlike solar you could get power in the winter under cloudy
skies. It's renewable energy un-dependant on wind or sun.
Now if you needed extra juice, you'd have remote control
thingys that would gently kick the spurs to them and steer
them to make them run, which I think horses like to do
anyway. Don't know, they seem to like it. Exercise is good
right?
Power of various animals
http://worldwideflo...gy/animal_power.htm
Ox, horse, donkey, camel etc. [doctorremulac3, Jan 26 2016]
(?) Or just line up 20 horses with this kind of deal here.
http://www.nzdl.org...SHe51c.dir/p151.png
20 horses on one of these deals for two hours a day would power a pretty big generator. [doctorremulac3, Jan 26 2016]
Yea, you can do it.
https://www.youtube...watch?v=9kdx0yMsuqA
It would have to be automated though. This following the ox around with a whip is for the birds. [doctorremulac3, Jan 26 2016]
[link]
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//It's renewable energy un-dependant on wind or sun. |
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Nuh un. The grazing grass has to grow somehow and horses would prefer to stay inside during high winds. |
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Pretty sure grass grows on the plains without man
having to do anything. If you've got a cattle farm with
thousands of head, you need to truck in bales of hay
but I'm talking about having a few acres with a few
horses. |
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Might not be practical but not because of the
revelation that
you can't keep horses outside when it's windy. I'm
pretty sure horses have evolved to live outside of
barns seeing that they've been around for millions of
years and barns have not. |
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The sun grows the grass, so this idea is dependent on the sun, unlike advertised. |
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Like most mammals, horses will seek shelter in inclement weather. Also, humans have been domesticating horses for thousands of years, so the wild wind-loving horses are no more. |
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Pedantry aside, if your 20 horses were each pulling 1/20th of your car, your daily range would be the horses' average range while out grazing or whatever. Putting a battery in the middle of the equation reduces your efficiency and cuts into your range. You may need more than 20. |
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//The sun grows the grass, so this idea is dependent
on the sun, unlike advertised.// |
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Sorry, I thought there was such a thing as grass.
Guess there isn't because it instantly disappears on
cloudy days. |
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Critiques of efficiency, yes. Critiquing the concept of
horses eating grass and pulling things? Not really up
for debate. It's a pretty proven concept. But yes, if
the sun were to suddenly never shine again, this idea
wouldn't work. |
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By the way, this would work great at night with no
sun whatsoever. |
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And on sunny nights as well. |
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//But yes, if the sun were to suddenly never shine again, this idea wouldn't work. |
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Ah ha! So you admit that grass needs the sun to grow. Now we're getting somewhere. Assume you need 1 acre of lush pasture to sustain 1 horse, not even counting the added calories needed to charge the battery. So, let's say 2 acres because of the load on the horse. The horse might go through that in 10 days, so you'd better hope it's sunny/wet/warm enough to be re-growing the whole time, otherwise you're going to need to buy hay or buy more land. |
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So put the horse on 5 acres and forget about it, as long as you don't have snow or winter where you live. Oh, and this pasture forage grows year round without dormancy, but if it doesn't then just buy 3 more acres. |
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But other than that, yeah, it's completely independent of sun, winter, and other environmental factors. |
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//Now we're getting somewhere.// |
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Well, there's room for disagreement on that point
too. |
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But I understand the gentle ribbing. I'm guilty of
doing it too sometimes. And by sometimes I mean all
the time. |
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I'm not defending the idea by the way, although I
guess I should being that it's mine. Horse drawn
generator/battery electricity generation might be a
dumb idea in practice. |
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Notice how I didn't put them on treadmills
though. I don't think they'd like that. |
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The original unit of horsepower was measured off Welsh mine
ponies, IIRC, so a big horse can put out more than one horsepower.
But no horse, just mooching about grazing, is putting out a
horsepower. You'd need to make the horses put forth the effort, and
allow for rest breaks. |
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You might be able to gear the cart for say, 1/8th horsepower, and get
them to accept a mild load as part of daily life. Or you could put food
in different places, and make them walk to it. (Some people who used
mules for logging would get them to drag logs unaccompanied by
using properly-placed food.) |
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How about working backwards? Figure a horse drawn
cart with 6 horses would get you to work 30 miles
away and back in maybe... 8 hours round trip? |
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So if you want to replace that horse powered
transportation method with this, could you have the
horses moving all day, and motivated to run a course
remotely somehow for a few hours then transfer that
energy to a lightweight electrical car to do the same
job? |
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Of course the electric car would do the round trip in
about an hour so there's that. |
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The other way you could do it is to just have them all
harnessed to a turnstile that turns a big generator
and walk them for two hours or so. See links. |
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By the way, looks like you're much better off with
camels. |
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//How do they grip the pencil?// |
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Sorry Ian, missed that post. |
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Very good. Not an LOL but got a smile out of me. |
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//Now we're getting somewhere.// |
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//Well, there's room for disagreement on that point too. |
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Isn't the whole point of this idea to get somewhere? Actually, if I had this much land, horses, and pasture, where would I need to go anyway? |
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True that. "Hey, let's leave this beautiful 50 acre
ranch in the mountains and drive around in the city." |
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// if I had this much land, horses, and pasture,
where would I need to go anyway?// |
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Apropos of which, old joke: |
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Texan rancher is belittling the Welsh farmer who's
visiting him. |
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"I got 12,000 head of cattle, boy, how many you
got?"
"Oh, only a couple of dozen."
"And I got me 35 men working for me, how about
you?"
"Oh, it's just me and my two sons."
"And if I start driving from the house, it'll take me
two hours before I'm off my own land."
"Oh yes, I used to have car like that too." |
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