How a Generator Works

Hello,

My name is Luca Stringer. I special in Graphical Design but I get out in my barn sometimes. You can read more about me in my bio at lucastringer.com. I made this Instructable because I love to explain things to people and teach them things Please watch my video on how everything works and how to use a Generator. Let's dive in.

You will need only your brain for this. You can have a gasoline engine or a generator to help you better understand how one works.

A generator is a tool used by many people to help generate electricity. Generators might be useful when there is no power coming to your house through the power lines or wherever you get your power. Now I got a Generator because I live in New Hampshire and we get a lot of snow up here so power can go out sometimes. It's better to be safe than sorry. So a Generator is made up of an engine to turn the Alternator (the thing that actually makes the electricity) and a fuel system and a Carburetor. This is the most basic understanding of a Generator.

An engine works by forcing a mixture of fuel and air from the carburetor and fuel system into a cylinder with a piston compressing the mixture and eventually lighting it on fire with a spark plug in turn creating energy (not electricity, energy can be electricity but for this form on energy it's not.) That was a lot of information in just one sentence, let me soread things out. So the gas comes from the gas can and goes to the carburetor and there it get's mixed with air to create a highly explosive substance. Then the mixture goes from the carburetor to the cylinder inside the engine where the cylinders are placed in such a way that when one cylinder goes up the other one goes down and so on and so forth. So when that get's compressed the spark plug gives the mixture a little jot and the mixture explodes. When that explodes the cylinder is forced down in turn forcing the other one up. That is a reaction that happens ten times a second so you don't hear the explosions but they're there.

An alternator works just like a motor but in reverse. So you would normally hook up a power source to a motor and watch it spin but what if you spin the motor while it was off? How a motor and an alternator work is pretty much the same. Both have a rod that has copper wire that is wrapped around it and then in the case there are a bunch of strong magnets. When something magnetic passes something magnetic it generates a little bit of electricity. When you spin that rod at very fast speeds you get a lot of electricity. Then you hook up the alternator to some other electronics and you can finally charge a battery with it.

So we know what an engine and an alternator do. What if we attach an alternator to an engine and fire up the engine? Well, you get a gas consuming mobile power plant. It works and it's great. You all have engines and alternators in your cars. just in different places. There can be different fuels for generators. Smaller ones tend to have gasoline powered engines and the larger ones tend to be powered on propane or natural gas. I bought a Tri-Fueled one. It can take Gasoline, Natural Gas, and Propane. I hope you guys found this Instructable very useful.