You can buy a "Biolite" camp stove which will charge cell phones , etc.

Thank you for an interesting video, though not quite an instructable. Gave me new bright ideas. Have a good day!

Does the heat need to be on the bottom? I'm thinking use a black one on top (painted?), and immerse the bottom one in a container of liquid fertilizer/nitrogen, then expose the top to the sun. It'd take a few minutes to gear up, but should run fine with continued sun.

Not to rain on anyone's parade but Peltier modules are a VERY inefficient way to convert heat energy into electricity. They are very expensive and do not provide enough useable current to be of much use unless you just want to power up a few led's or a small fan. I thought about just attaching one to my wood stove but if you have to buy you are not going to get much bang for the buck. Interesing instruct able tho keep up the good work...,and if it were me I'd scrounge one out of an old electric refrigerator/ cooler like the Coleman line.

The light you get from the candles themselves is way more than you'll ever get from that lightbulb.

How about instead of candles, you try a Fresnel lens? I've seen those things make pennies explode like firecrackers. Get a small one, check on craigslist.com for old overhead projectors and such. For larger ones, check out:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Giant-Fresnel-Lens-Deathray-An-Experiment-in-Opti/

He tells you how to get them. Even if you don't plan on building one, it's a good read.

What does thermal grease do??

so, in theory, this could be used in electronics to recover electricity in say a cpu chip? and if it was good enough recover all, well, never all but most of the electricity lost in computers? could you have a computer that runs on like 1 watt?

well you have to spend some to get some but in this case save a little or some

peltier cells arent exactly free energy, they operate at lower efficiency than conventional solar panels most of the time

Do you realise that it's not free when you have to pay for candles / blow torch and other stuff

I see you are on the right track, The problem being obtaining free heat & cooling at the same time, It is only because you, as most others were condition to think in strait lines, Learned from books or others that were lerned the same way.Take some time to sit in the woods alone for a day or two with nothing but your thoughts and you will find the soloution, But I will give you a hint to get you started, Swimming pools. summer sun. All you have to do is get away from tecnolagy for a short while for the lite to go on. Dont give up , your almost there.
WJ

Why not just use the candles in lighting a room instead of using peltier modules?

Fine
But one thing I don't get : why do you claim this electricity is free ?…
As with the Stirling engine you need a candle to heat it …
If you ue solar power ok this is free, or if you can use wasted heat from all appliances at home and the office, would be interesting …
Otherwise, it is just a Pelletier effect no ? …

this gives me an idea if you were to use the panel in between a heat-sink and a bunch of transistors/regulators in a circuit then the output of a panel connected to a joule thief circuit which will be wired back into the input of whatever the circuit is with all the transistors/resistors can you increase the efficiency of it?

"No sh**t !!!" What is the point of replacing characters if it is obvious what word you are using? There is none. It is still profane. You are still communicating the same thing. Please refrain from using profanity.

Heating the water costs money. Fuel costs money. Running a PC costs money. And you can't power the PC with the Peltiers module because of the laws of thermodynamics. Not really free.

Not free if you have to buy candles and/or butane gas to heat, is it?

BMW was doing some experiments with these in an effort to replace the vehicle alternator. They were using a pile constructed around the exhaust pipe near the manifolds and then for the cold side a seperate radiator with cooling fluid. I don't know if they had enough success to offer it on their cars but it sure looks interesting. Another application might be to use this setup to produce electricity for HHO production. One of the problems as I understand it is to not us power from the engine to produce the HHO thus not increasing the fuel consumption. There is a video on You Tube showing the BMW setup.

Nice idea but somehow I think the cost of candles would outweigh the cost of normal electricity. Candles aren't going to burn more than 12 hours and if you need 6 of them to generate 7V then.. well you see where I'm going with this.

Thanks for the entertaining video though ;)

I’ve tried standard peltier modules for power generation with limited success and very short service life. They cannot hold up to the higher temperatures necessary for good power generation performance. I found a terrific supplier with both standard temperature and high temperature TEG modules designed specifically for power generation. They sell a lot of devices on eBay and you can also buy from them direct. The company is Thermal Enterprises and here is are links to a couple of their eBay items.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=310148993913&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT


http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=310209561834&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT

It isnt chep energy

Sterling engines can reach efficiencies of over 80%. These couplings max out at about 10%. They are much simpler, however, and very dependable...

Nice video, I can see you put some time into it. 

The amount of energy wasted from those candles and the torch are insane.  You're only getting a fraction of the energy from the candles to the lightbulb.  Then there's the random torch...

To put it very simply, a single candle is many times brighter than the bulb. 

I guess my point is, if you want to light that bulb, just light the candle instead :)

Remember, there's NO free lunch in physics.

sorry but these are not as efficient as a sterling these are about 5% while sterlings can be up to 40%

what if you put ice on top of the radiator?