Does anyone have building plans for making your own power source?

Hey! This is a serious question with answers not outside the realm of possibility!
Consider the 18 year old who recently co-designed an industrial strength, underwater geothermal generator.
See: http://www.popsci.com/scitech/gallery/2009-08/gallery-scouting-guide-top-high-school-inventors

No plans here, but for everyday diy, check out sites like instructables or Make Magazine.
If you’re motivated, you’ll figure it out. Good luck!

[mod says] Please answer the actual question first, and save the joking for later.

There are many excellent articles to be found online. This one by David Butcher has a lot of information about how it works, but I believe you have to purchase the plans.

I’m not really up to the task of building any machinery but once I move to Va. in a few yrs. I’m planning to buy a car with a diesel engine and run it on waste vegetable oil.

The thought of all that fryer oil going to waste while gas prices rise has me motivated.

I don’t have either the equipment or the science background to convert it to biodiesel but if anyone does it’s not extraordinarily difficult. Not totally free fuel but the next best thing.

I did quite a bit of research on this several years ago and I keep seeing more and more about here and there.

Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs did a segment on a guy making his own biodiesel and running his car and heating his home withit.

There are more and more singers and bands running their tour buses on bio and Willie Nelson is opening a chain of biodiesel gas stations.

I can’t do links on the phone but what started the ball rolling for me was just putting “veggie car” into Google. I imagine biodiesel soul net a whole bunch more links.

I dont know why the Govt. doesn’t get behind this. Imagine taking all the used fryer oil and converting it. And then being able to get along without so much foreign oil.

Ah well, I can dream can’t I?

Yes, right next to my proton torpedoes.

@augustlan Jokes don’t have the same effect when they are posted later.

Earth4Energy is as good a place to start as any other site.

Ha, in your dreams….

Now how did I know that the reference to torpedoes was written by a guy without evenvreading the SN.

You little phallic boys are incorrigible. :D

Proton torpedoes are from Star Wars.

I bought into something promising. I can send it to you for what it is worth I haven’t had much time to give it a great deal of attention. If I can let me know what you think. I got to check out its copyright laws-pretty old, maybe plausible.

I’m getting more and more serious about geothermal heating and cooling. I just learned from Consumer Reports that it is possible to build a small geothermal system, just for one house. It costs between $5000 and $8000, they said. That seems low to me, but very doable.

Well, after a little research, the cost I mentioned may be just for the unit. You also have to drill holes, and install the thing, and that could raise the cost to between 25K and 150K. Ouch!

@wundayatta and your ability to drill might also run into mineral rights. Many who owns property do not own the mineral rights below that property.