Watch: Off-the-Grid Water Wheel Generator in Kentucky

Free electricity. Gotta love it, right? One guy sure does, at least when his creek’s not flooded or frozen.

This admittedly crude setup, much of it done with free materials, produces power to run lights, television, etc.

A spillway built into a shallow creek dumps water onto a homemade water wheel, which turns a bicycle sprocket, which turns a bicycle wheel, which turns an alternator.

The alternator puts out a bunch of power–a little more than 40 volts in this video–which is then regulated and fed to a bank of vehicle batteries, all of which were free or mighty cheap. From there, an inverter turns the juice into AC to power whatever he needs to run.

Pretty good. Shows what a resourceful person can do with found objects when the need arises.

Russ Chastain

Editor & Contributing Writer Russ Chastain is a lifelong hunter and shooter who has spent his life learning about hunting, shooting, guns, ammunition, gunsmithing, reloading, and bullet casting. He started toting his own gun in the woods at age nine and he's pursued deer with rifles since 1982, so his hunting knowledge has been growing for more than three and a half decades. His desire and ability to share this knowledge with others has also grown, and Russ has been professionally writing and editing original hunting & shooting content since 1998. Russ Chastain has a passion for sharing accurate, honest, interesting hunting & shooting knowledge and stories with people of all skill levels.