Interesting, thanks gents.
I was pondering that you could drive any variety of common electric motors/pumps for some purpose.
Electric fan, water pump, maybe oil pump, maybe even A/C.
I'll look into invertors. In any case, all the energy would come from, and be limited to, the high current alternator.
Bingo in bold. Using a set up like this to power things won't necessarily get you anywhere, since the alternator can still only deliver the same amount of max power. High volts gets you lower amperage, which does get you smaller wires, which can be an advantage sometimes.
Don't forget the guy in the video is using a pair of step-up transformers to get to 120vAC. Coming out of the alternator I would assume it's closer to 30?vAC. By using the step-up transformers, he's trading amperage for voltage. Power drawn remains the same
If given the choice between a 12v water pump directly off the regulated output from the alt, or a 120v water pump with a setup like in the video, the 12v will be more efficient since it doesn't have the conversion losses
