« Just Another Hurricane Season? | Main | We Are Honored »
July 21, 2005
I'm Disappointed In Car Alternators
By:
So, I had this idea yesterday, which I now know isn't feasible because of the extremely energy inefficient way that alternators work in cars. For those of you who don't know, the alternator creates an electric current from the engine being run in order to charge your car's battery, thereby powering your radio, the starter, air conditioning, etc.
My idea was that if the alternator stops when the battery doesn't need to be charged, then I could install a few solar panels on the car (like those trickle chargers you can use to keep RV batteries from dying if they're not going to be used for a while) to keep your battery topped off and therefore use less gas to charge it.
As it turns out, however, the alternator is always being spun by the engine, no matter if the battery is charged or not. This is a huge waste, in my opinion.
I guess that if the alternator continues to spin, which I figured it probably did, I may as well not worry about this, because it would indeed be pointless.
And, using solar to charge anything else in the car would be pointless too, because then I would be using MORE energy, since the energy being generated by the alternator would be wasted if I didn't use it.
Let me say, though, that I find this extremely wasteful, and perhaps my project should now be to figure out if there's anything that allows me to control the alternator and keep it from being spun when it doesn't need to be. I bet there isn't, though, which is disappointing as well. The irony of all this is that since the alternator is constantly being spun, I'd be most energy efficient to plug a gazillion things into my car to use as much energy as possible, so it isn't being wasted!
What a crock!
Posted by George at July 21, 2005 6:51 AM Category: Alternatives
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.radnoesis.info/mt33/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/1651
Comments
I can't really tell from your post if you understand that when the engine is running, the alternator is not only charging the battery, but also powering the radio, clock, and just about everything else in the car that needs electricity to run. Including the ignition system. Which is what makes the spark to fire the cylinders. Once the car is running, the battery does almost nothing except charge itself until it's recharged, waiting for you to need it when you start the car again. So the energy being created by the alternator is not really being wasted, since it's what's powering the car while the engine is on. And its the job of the voltage regulator (now internal, but once upon a time these used to be something you could replace if it went bad instead of the whole alternator) to determine how much energy the alternator creates and distributes. i mean, the alternator is not just creating this huge amount of unregulated power. It creates and distributes what the voltage regulator tells it to.
But if you still want to throttle down energy production on an alternator, look at what a fan clutch does, and how the air conditioning pump works.
Posted by: pril at July 21, 2005 10:10 AM
"So the energy being created by the alternator is not really being wasted, since it's what's powering the car while the engine is on"
Right, it's powering the car while the engine is on, but even if I'm not using that power, it keeps generating it. Therefore, it is wasing that energy and using gas to create it.
Posted by: George at July 22, 2005 7:25 AM
It has been my experience that in some older automobiles, the alternator needs to be replaced every six months or so because they don't make remakes to last. They are made like every other consumer product that requires repetitive new purchases.
As for the argument here, I am electronically dyslexic so I will not comment on the use of the processes.
Posted by: Shawna at July 22, 2005 9:16 AM
I know very little about the way automobiles operate, therefore I found your information, and pril's further clarifications very interesting.
There are many facets of automotive operations that seem counter-intuitive to me, for instance pril's note that the voltage regulator was once able to be replaced without replacing an entire alternator.
My father was a mechanic, and I recall him telling me that cars could be made very differently, remaining viable for much longer if certain parts were made with different materials, etc.
Posted by: Pamela at July 24, 2005 1:20 PM