Forum Post: Confiscated Generators, Friday 10/28/11: A Plan
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 29, 2011, 4:29 a.m. EST by RobertYellowTie
(18)
from Brooklyn, NY
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
A few minutes ago I woke up and sent some of you whom I know (in Finance, Media, Planning, Design, Direct Action, and other Groups) a text message regarding a way to shrug-off the confiscation of our generators by the FDNY on Friday and at the same time majorly improve our situation in the camp for winter. Even at 4 AM (don't you people SLEEP?), I got back some encouraging replies and one person in Finance tells me something like I suggested was already being worked on (It's GREAT that people love us! Though I hope I added some much more ambitious aspects...)
I don't want to go into more details here but (cough, sniff) I'm also coming down with a cold and sore throat, dammit, so I'm likely unable to attend morning meetings to talk about it further. IF YOU GOT MY TEXT, please, PLEASE! pass it along to the 9 AM coordinator's meeting at Trinity Church.
Cheers! Robert "Yellow Tie", of Town Planning
You're gonna get a little bit of snow tomorrow, mixed with rain. It will rain in the morning, then after 5 pm turn to some slushy snow, so get some rain gear and some Zinc lozenges to fight off that cold.
MIT freshman, studying electrical engineering and computer science. I don't know that much, but I can think of a few ideas. First of all, a bicycle generator is probably not the best idea for doing something like this because it's not particularly practical. As Nate suggested, it would be a great idea to look into solar battery chargers and alternating banks of car batteries to see if that would provide enough power for most of what you need.
If that doesn't work out, you might try buying or building a Stirling engine to generate power. It's different from an internal combustion engine in that it doesn't require anything to be burned inside of it; it merely requires a temperature gradient across it. They sell small novelty ones for a couple of hundred dollars apiece that you stick on top of coffee cups to spin little propellers. I'm not sure how much it would cost to get a larger one that you could run off a garbage can fire or makeshift oven, but a few of the latter could give you a great deal of power with no extra emissions. You can find out more about them here: http://www.stirlingengine.com/faq
Actually, this isn't about a tech solution but a simpler social one. More to come.