- 4 days ago
There is a small tile, about the size of a postage stamp, that you can set on top of a hot wood stove — a stove already burning, already throwing off heat you are doing nothing with — and that little tile will make electricity. No sun. No wind. No fuel beyond the fire you already lit. No wire running back to the power company.
It costs about fifteen dollars, and it runs on a principle figured out two hundred years ago — the very same principle powering two spacecraft that left this earth in 1977 and are still sending their signal home today.
In this video I show you exactly what it is, what to buy, and how to put it together. I will be honest with you right at the start: this is not something my grandfather did. It is a new thing, a modern thing. But it lives by the oldest rule he ever taught me — waste nothing. Your stove is already burning; here is how to catch a little of the heat you are already throwing away and turn it into power for your lights, your radio, your lantern, your tools.
I tell you which part to buy and which common mistake to avoid (the cheap cooling tile most folks grab will fail on a stove — you want the real generator module). And I am honest about what it do
It costs about fifteen dollars, and it runs on a principle figured out two hundred years ago — the very same principle powering two spacecraft that left this earth in 1977 and are still sending their signal home today.
In this video I show you exactly what it is, what to buy, and how to put it together. I will be honest with you right at the start: this is not something my grandfather did. It is a new thing, a modern thing. But it lives by the oldest rule he ever taught me — waste nothing. Your stove is already burning; here is how to catch a little of the heat you are already throwing away and turn it into power for your lights, your radio, your lantern, your tools.
I tell you which part to buy and which common mistake to avoid (the cheap cooling tile most folks grab will fail on a stove — you want the real generator module). And I am honest about what it do
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00I am going to tell you something true that sounds like a tall tale.
00:04There is a small tile, about the size of a postage stamp, and not much thicker than a few coins
00:10stacked up,
00:11that you can set on top of a hot wood stove, a stove that is already burning,
00:16already throwing off heat you are doing nothing with, and that little tile will make electricity.
00:23No sun, no wind, no fuel beyond the fire you already lit, no wire running back to the power company,
00:31just heat on one side, cool on the other, and electric current coming out the wires.
00:37It costs about $15. A child could put it together in half an hour.
00:42And the principle it runs on was figured out 200 years ago and is, this very minute,
00:48it, powering two spacecraft that left this earth before I had my first child,
00:54and are now so far away their signal takes most of a day to reach us.
00:59My name is Elias Yoda. I am Amish, and I will be honest with you right at the top,
01:05because honest is the only way I know how to do this. This is not something my grandfather did.
01:11My grandfather never saw one of these. This is a new thing, a modern thing.
01:16But I am showing it to you anyway, because it lives by the oldest rule my grandfather ever taught me,
01:23waste nothing. Your stove is already burning. The heat is already pouring off it and going to nothing.
01:30This is a way to catch a little of what you are already throwing away,
01:34and turn it into something useful, on your own stove, on your own terms, beholden to no one.
01:41And that, catching the free thing nobody else bothers to catch, is about as Amish as it gets.
01:48Stay with me. By the end, you will know exactly what to buy, how to put it together,
01:54and honestly what it will and will not do.
01:58Let me tell you where this comes from, because once you understand it, the rest makes plain sense.
02:04Two hundred years ago, in 1821, a man named Thomas Seebeck noticed something.
02:11When you join two different kinds of metal or special material together,
02:15and you make one side hot while the other side stays cool, electricity appears,
02:21just from the difference in temperature.
02:24No burning, no chemical, no spinning parts.
02:28Hot on one side, cool on the other, and current flows across the gap.
02:33The bigger the difference between the hot and the cool, the more electricity you get.
02:38That is the whole of it.
02:40They call it the Seebeck effect, after the man who saw it.
02:44Now, for a hundred years, that sat mostly on a shelf, because coal was cheap and nobody needed it.
02:50But then the people who really needed power where there was no power, went looking, and they found it again.
02:57The Soviets, over in Russia, needed to run lighthouses and beacons all along their frozen arctic coast,
03:04places with no power line for hundreds of miles, and nobody around to tend them.
03:10So they built generators that ran on this exact principle.
03:13A hot source on one side, the cold arctic air on the other, electricity in the middle.
03:19Set it, walk away, come back in ten years, and it is still running.
03:25They built over a thousand of them.
03:28And then, the Americans, NASA, needed to power spacecraft headed so far from the sun
03:34that solar panels are useless out there.
03:37Too little light.
03:38So, in 1977, they launched two probes, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, and to power them, they used
03:47this same idea.
03:48A hot side, a cool side, electricity from the difference, no moving parts to wear out.
03:55Now, I will be straight with you about how they make the hot side way out there in the
04:00cold of space.
04:01They use a bit of material that gives off heat on its own, which is not something you or
04:07I are going to do at home.
04:08But the part that turns that heat into electricity, the trick itself, is the very same 200-year-old
04:15principle you can buy for a few dollars.
04:18And those two probes are still out there right now, farther from Earth than anything humans
04:24have ever sent, still sending their signal home, running on a temperature difference.
04:29Fifty years.
04:31No moving parts.
04:33No maintenance.
04:34Just hot on one side, cool on the other.
04:37So, why is this not in every home and every hardware store?
04:42Same reason as everything else I show you.
04:45Because the power company built a grid, and cheap power off the grid made folks feel they
04:51did not need to make any of their own.
04:53The trick got kept alive for spacecraft and the military, and it never made it to your stove.
04:59Not because it does not work, but because there is no money in telling a man that a $15 tile
05:07on the stove he is already running can make electricity from heat he is already wasting.
05:14Nobody can sell you a monthly bill for that.
05:18Now, here is the build, and it is genuinely simple.
05:22The main part is called a TEG module, a thermal electric generator.
05:28It is that little tile I described, ceramic and metal, about the size of a large postage stamp.
05:35Inside it are dozens of pairs of special material that do the Seebeck trick.
05:40Hot on the bottom, cool on the top, electricity out the two little wires.
05:47Now, I have to give you one important word here, because there is a common mistake,
05:52and I would rather you get it right the first time.
05:55There are two kinds of these tiles that look almost the same,
06:00and folks online often grab the wrong one.
06:03There is a cooling tile, sometimes you will see the number TEC-12706,
06:12that was actually built for cooling things, not making power,
06:16and it cannot take the high heat of a wood stove for long.
06:21It will work a little, then it will quit on you.
06:25What you want instead is a tile actually built to make power from heat,
06:30a real TEG module, sometimes numbered SP1848 or similar,
06:38which makes more electricity and is built to handle the heat of a stove.
06:43So when you go to buy, look for the generator module, the TEG, not the cooler.
06:51That one detail is the difference between this working for years and failing in a week.
06:58The tile alone makes only a few volts, which is not quite enough to do much directly.
07:04So you add one more cheap part, a little booster.
07:09A small circuit, a few dollars, with a USB plug on it that takes the small voltage from the tile
07:16and steps it up to a clean, steady 5 volts, the kind that runs a USB cord.
07:24Tile, booster, that is the heart of it.
07:27All in, you are around 15 dollars.
07:31Here is how you set it up to actually work well, because the trick is all in the temperature difference.
07:39You set the TEG tile flat on the hot surface of your stove.
07:44Between the tile and the stove, you smear a thin layer of heat paste,
07:49the same paste they use inside computers to move heat, so the heat passes into the tile well.
07:56That is your hot side.
07:59Then, on top of the tile, you fasten a heat sink,
08:03one of those finned metal blocks like a little comb of aluminum fins.
08:08Its whole job is to throw off heat and keep the top of the tile as cool as it can
08:15be.
08:15Because remember the rule.
08:17The bigger the difference between the hot bottom and the cool top, the more electricity you make.
08:25So you want that top side shedding heat as fast as it can.
08:30A little breeze across those fins, even just the air of the room moving, makes a real difference.
08:37Some folks set a small fan to blow across it, and here is a nice touch.
08:42You can run that little fan off the very electricity the tile is making.
08:48Wire the tile to the booster, plug your cord into the booster,
08:52and you are pulling electricity out of a fire that was already burning.
08:58Now, I am going to be honest with you about what this does and what it does not,
09:03because there are videos out there that will have you believing this little tile will light your whole house.
09:10And that is foolishness, and I will not be part of it.
09:15One small tile makes a modest trickle of power.
09:19It is not going to run your refrigerator.
09:22It is not going to run your well pump.
09:25It is not going to power your house.
09:29Anyone who tells you a $15 tile does that is lying to you, and you should close that video.
09:36What one tile will do is a slow, steady trickle, enough to charge up small things over time.
09:45A radio.
09:47A lantern.
09:48A flashlight or a headlamp battery.
09:51A small LED light.
09:53For the English watching, or for a fellow at his hunting cabin, it will slowly charge a phone.
10:00Slowly, mind you, a trickle, not the fast charge you get from the wall.
10:04It is for the little things, and for charging them up patiently,
10:08while the fire is doing its main job of keeping you warm.
10:12Now, if you want more, you do what a friend of a friend did.
10:16You do not use one tile.
10:19You use several, wired together, with a better booster, feeding into a small battery to store it up.
10:25Put a handful of these on the stove, or up against the stove pipe, run them into a battery bank,
10:32and now you are charging that battery any time there is a fire going.
10:36Enough to run your LED lights through the cabin of an evening.
10:40Keep your radio and your tools charged.
10:42Trickle a little into the battery that runs a small pump.
10:46Still not your whole house, but real, useful, free power,
10:51off a fire you were burning anyway, when the sun is down and the solar panels are doing nothing,
10:57and the grid, if you are on it, has gone out in the storm.
11:01That is the honest picture.
11:03Modest from one tile.
11:05Genuinely useful from several.
11:08Never your whole house.
11:09And here is the part I like best,
11:12because once you understand the principle, you start seeing free heat everywhere.
11:17And free heat is free electricity waiting to be caught.
11:21The wood stove is the obvious one, and the best one for most folks,
11:25because in winter, that stove is running all day and all evening anyway.
11:30But think wider.
11:31A fellow who travels in one of those camper vans or work rigs,
11:35the engine throws off a tremendous amount of heat when it runs, heat that just blows away to nothing.
11:41Set a tile against the warm metal near the engine, and it makes a little power every mile you drive.
11:47It will not replace the alternator, but it quietly tops up your batteries the whole time you are rolling, with
11:54no panel to aim at the sun.
11:56Out camping, a single tile and a booster fit in a coat pocket.
12:01Set it on the edge of your camp stove or near your fire, the same fire you are cooking your
12:06supper on,
12:07fins up to catch the air, and you have a charger running off the meal you are already cooking.
12:12No battery pack to remember to charge before you left home.
12:16A hunting or fishing cabin used a few times a season, with a little propane heater or a wood stove.
12:22The heat is already there, so a small setup keeps the radios and the lights and the GPS charged all
12:29season,
12:30without hauling in batteries or running a noisy generator.
12:33And here is the one that surprises everybody, and it tickles me because it is the most Amish of all.
12:39A compost pile, a good active pile of rotting plant matter and manure breaking down, gets genuinely hot inside,
12:48hot enough to steam on a cold morning, while the outside stays cool.
12:53That is a temperature difference.
12:55Set a tile at that boundary, hot side in toward the heat, cool side out,
13:00and that rotting pile will make a little electricity, enough to run a small sensor or a little light,
13:06off nothing but the heat of things breaking down the way God made them to.
13:11No fire, no fuel, no sun.
13:14Just biology doing its work, and you catching a bit of the energy on its way out.
13:19My grandfather would have laughed and approved.
13:22Now I want to take a moment, because this is the part that matters,
13:25and it ties back to everything I believe.
13:28Think about how much heat you make and throw away.
13:31Your wood stove heats the room,
13:33but a great deal of its heat goes straight up the pipe and out the roof, wasted.
13:38Your cook stove, your car engine, your compost pile, the fires you build.
13:44Every one of them makes far more heat than you ever use,
13:47and the rest just leaks away into the air, gone, paid for, and wasted.
13:52We have gotten so used to wasting it that we do not even see it anymore.
13:57Now think about what the power company does.
13:59It burns fuel, coal, gas, to make heat, uses that heat to make electricity,
14:06and then runs it down hundreds of miles of wire to your house,
14:10losing some all along the way, and bills you for every bit.
14:14They make their living turning heat into electricity and selling it back to you.
14:19And here you sit, in your own home, making heat all winter long with your own stove,
14:25and throwing away every bit of the electricity it could give you,
14:29because nobody ever told you that you could keep some.
14:33That is the whole thing, really.
14:35Not that this little tile will free you from the power company.
14:39One tile will not, and I will not pretend it will.
14:42But it cracks the door open on a way of seeing that the old people had and we lost.
14:48They wasted nothing.
14:50The heat from the cook stove warmed the kitchen, then warmed the water,
14:55then warmed the room above through the floor.
14:58One fire did five jobs.
15:01This little tile is just a new way to do an old thing,
15:05to wring one more bit of use out of heat you already paid for,
15:09instead of letting it all fly up the chimney while you write a check to a stranger
15:14for the same electricity it could have made.
15:17It is a new tool, but it obeys the oldest rule there is.
15:23Waste nothing.
15:25So here is what I want you to do.
15:27If you have a wood stove, or a hunting cabin with a stove,
15:31or you travel in a rig, or you keep a compost pile,
15:35order yourself a TEG module, the generator kind, not the cooler kind,
15:40and a little USB booster.
15:43Fifteen dollars the two of them.
15:45Get a small heat sink and a dab of heat paste while you are at it.
15:50Set the tile on your hot stove with the paste under it,
15:54the heat sink fastened on top,
15:56wire it to the booster,
15:58and plug in a small light or a radio or a charging cord.
16:02Watch it come to life off a fire that was already burning.
16:06Start small, with one.
16:09Once you have seen it work with your own eyes and you understand it,
16:13then you can decide whether to add more tiles and a battery
16:17and build something bigger.
16:19And remember the honest limit.
16:21It is a trickle from one, useful power from several,
16:26never your whole house.
16:28Anybody who tells you different is selling something.
16:32Tell me in the comments below,
16:34what heat are you wasting right now that you had never thought about?
16:38The wood stove? The cook stove? The engine? The compost?
16:43I read every single one and your answers tell me what to dig into next.
16:49And if you build one, come back and tell me how it went,
16:53what you ran off it, how it held up.
16:55The folks who try these things and report back are the reason I keep doing this.
17:01Next time, I am going to show you the old way we get the most heat out of the least
17:06wood.
17:06How a stove is set and a room is built so that one armload of firewood warms a house all
17:14night,
17:14the way it was done before anybody had wood to waste.
17:18It pairs with everything I showed you today because it is the same rule again.
17:24Waste nothing.
17:26Until then, catch what you are throwing away,
17:29waste nothing, and remember,
17:32the people who built this country with their hands
17:34knew things we are only just starting to remember.
17:37and here to get the interest of ourけど,��
17:37buenos to him withärke sand Gardens. Let's
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