I have one of these new fangled wind up torches. One twirls a handle for a minute and has half an hour of quite decent light from an LED. I can't believe that any sort of battery is involved and rather think that some sort of condenser must be the storage item. If so it seems quite a condenser to store so much even driving an LED. Wouldn't it be superb if one could have an ebike battery with such a thing??? Quite impossible I'm sure but modern science often seems to be the art of invoking the impossible.
Better batteries
- Thread starter tgame
- Start date
i have bought 3 of these torches and 2 did not work, different model each time......
my reelights on my bike manage to keep flashing for 5 minutes after the wheels stop so there is possibilities to harness power somehow there too
my reelights on my bike manage to keep flashing for 5 minutes after the wheels stop so there is possibilities to harness power somehow there too
And a marvelously reassuring thing it is too. Not that I do much after dark or ever shall. I wonder if it is a condenser? I would rather suspect a small battery of some sort. Does anyone know?
It's all a matter of the energy available. Think of a water pipe. Water pressure makes the water flow. Water flow is current, ie amps in electricity, pressure is volts.
Condensers, or capacitors as we have called them for 50 odd years! (That ages someone!) have comparatively low energy storage abilities compared to batteries.
Analogue radios and led lights dont need a lot of current, possibly fractions of a Watt. Therefore current in the form of the amps flowing is low, and the volts stored in the capacitor don't need to be high and may last longer. (Amps times Volts = power in Watts).
Our needs for powering a bicycle are measured in many tens of Watts. You'd need a capacitor the size of the Albert Hall!
Condensers, or capacitors as we have called them for 50 odd years! (That ages someone!) have comparatively low energy storage abilities compared to batteries.
Analogue radios and led lights dont need a lot of current, possibly fractions of a Watt. Therefore current in the form of the amps flowing is low, and the volts stored in the capacitor don't need to be high and may last longer. (Amps times Volts = power in Watts).
Our needs for powering a bicycle are measured in many tens of Watts. You'd need a capacitor the size of the Albert Hall!
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There are also supercapacitors or ultracapacitors that can hold a substantial charge but not matching conventional batteries just yet (about a tenth of the charge of conventional batteries). They are promising for EV transport because they can be charged very quickly and discharged quickly as well. I am sure they would have a longer life as well. So an area of development that would be useful for us.
EEStor
The EESTOR company is working on a "ultracapacitor" for use in electric vehicles. They claim to have solved some of the difficult production problems. They have a relationship with an electrical vehicle company, Zenn. Zenn claims that they will be shipping electrical vehicles with the ultracapacitor in Fall of 2009. The Lockheed Martin company signed some sort of deal with EESTOR giving Lockheed rights for using the EESTOR technology for military contracts. This adds a little bit of credibility to the story that the ultracapacitor will work. So far, no one outside of EEStor has, to my knowledge, see a prototype, working ultracapacitor. The LM relationship with EEStor may be something that LM did just to make sure that if the ultracapacitor did actually work that they, LM, would have a corner on the military/"homeland security" market.
I think that the car in the "Back to the Future" move used a "Flux capacitor."
The EESTOR company is working on a "ultracapacitor" for use in electric vehicles. They claim to have solved some of the difficult production problems. They have a relationship with an electrical vehicle company, Zenn. Zenn claims that they will be shipping electrical vehicles with the ultracapacitor in Fall of 2009. The Lockheed Martin company signed some sort of deal with EESTOR giving Lockheed rights for using the EESTOR technology for military contracts. This adds a little bit of credibility to the story that the ultracapacitor will work. So far, no one outside of EEStor has, to my knowledge, see a prototype, working ultracapacitor. The LM relationship with EEStor may be something that LM did just to make sure that if the ultracapacitor did actually work that they, LM, would have a corner on the military/"homeland security" market.
I think that the car in the "Back to the Future" move used a "Flux capacitor."