Inspiration

We originally decided to go with the 'Door Generator' as it was more feasible and had more potential than our other ideas. The prototype would not be too difficult to build and the invention would still be practical and help generate a significant amount of energy. The idea of renewable energy is not new, but this invention has a lot of potential as it can generate energy without requiring a large amount of resources, especially in terms of cost. It could even be possible to put this idea on the market, as there is heightened awareness about energy consumption rising and running out of energy sources such as fossil fuels. However, we soon met with a drawback. Just how effective would our invention be in generating electricity? As our mentor pointed out, our invention would be useless if the energy generated would not be significant, and the energy from simply swinging a door open might not be enough.

In order to test if we could generate a significant amount of energy, we ran some tests using a 1:87 gear ratio dynamo. The dynamo was originally a motor however, and thus not the most efficient of its type. However, it still generates a relatively high output. Using a speed of 0.75 m/s

for a distance of 76.5cm, we obtained the average result of 3.4 amperes and 11.71 volts. This was better than we had expected, and thus we decided to go ahead with building the prototype.