Originally Posted by
JohnJ80
Not knowing much about that particular set up, but I'd think if you could get 3X the power out of it, you'd be running the components in the hub in a manner that would contribute to their early failure.
Not necessarily. The limitation is legal/regulatory as opposed to technological.
German traffic law is the strictest in the world for both automobile and bicycle lighting systems. For bicycles, at least, the regs are known as StVZO/TA. All the dynamo manufacturers I can think of make their dynamos (either hub or bottle) compliant with StVZO/TA. Many of the better dynamo-powered lights do as well.
Most of the regulations apply for speeds between 10 and 15 km/h (6-9 mph). (This is one of my beefs with StVZO/TA.) As you go faster, the hub creates more juice. This extra power is regulated away. Over 20 mph, I can feel it as a buzz or vibration in my bars. In other words, the power is there, it's just that commercial lighting products are not allowed to use it if they want to be compliant with StVZO/TA, so they dump it back to ground.
See
Bicycle lighting in StVZO/TA. Scroll down a bit to the section titled, "Elaborations on the requirements: what they mean, how they limit what manufacturers can make, and more"
This page,
Dynamo-Powered LED Light Circuits for Bicycles, has circuit diagrams and parts lists you can use to home-brew lights in excess of those commercially available. It's something I can't do, so I'm stuck with the commercial stuff.