Author Topic: Rebuilding a crashed 10kw turbine and tower.....first post  (Read 4719 times)

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metalmangler

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Rebuilding a crashed 10kw turbine and tower.....first post
« on: June 02, 2015, 08:29:14 PM »
Howdy from the Maritimes
I am here looking for advice and knowledge during my rebuild project.
The three areas I need help in are, how to erect a 60 foot steel tower, how to build  strong 12 foot blades, and how to
size resistance heaters to match an alternator.
Here is the basic info.
Just finished salvaging a bergey exel 10kw on a 60 foot monopole that snaped off at the base weld in november after bieng up
for 10 years.Looks like it was cut off with a sharp knife.Landed in plowed field.
The bad ,blades are cracked, the damper for the furling mechanism is broken, and the tower needs a new base.
The good, the tower is still strait, the generator turns freely, tail is good, came with all the grid tied electrical equipment and a bunch
of wire.
The plan is to rebuild the tower as a guyed tilt up tower, build blades and run the turbine directly to resistance heaters for heating
water.
My site has an average wind speed around 7m/s, with most of that coming in lump sums.
Been living off grid for years useing solar, built all my systems and have a basic understanding of electrical terminology
and math.
Have extensive metal, wood working and moving realy heavy things experience.
Bought the two Dans book.Read it.
Now that it is home my next big job is to run electrical and mechanical tests on the alternator, 1250lbs.
Have the test procedure from Bergey.Will have to rent or buy a "megger"There is a tiawanese one for sale used at $200,
will see what the cat dealership wants to rent one.
I will look under a tandem dump truck to see how they build the hinge and build something similar for the tilt up part.
This thing will make more than 60 amps at 240 volts so I am thinking of finding a three phase transformer and jumping the
voltage up to keep wire size down..........if there are resistance heaters to match that dont eat the cost savings.....my tower
site is 300 feet from the house so wire could end up bieng a big chunk of the cost.
The house has a stone and concrete cystern in the basement that will be insulated and covered , 7'x8'x5' inside, that will be
used as the hot water storage.
Putting this thing up is definetly the scarry part, 60 feet with at least 1500lbs at the end, is it going to move or make higher pitched complaining noises?The first inch is the hardest right?
Any and all info on building blades of this size will be apreciated, I will be going through the site to collect what I can.
My instinct is to use eastern white spruce strips layed up with carbon fibre tape in the epoxyed joints, covered with light
fibreglass and a rubber wear strip on the leading edge.
A camera is my next purchase and I will learn how to post pictures.
Thats everything for now.
This site has already been a great inspiration in this project and thanks for that.





Get it done quick no matter how long it takes

joestue

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Re: Rebuilding a crashed 10kw turbine and tower.....first post
« Reply #1 on: June 03, 2015, 12:23:41 AM »
I think this is better than the 20$ option ebay has to offer.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/DUOYI-Digital-Insulation-Resistance-Tester-Megger-MegOhmmeter-Meter-1000V-DY30-1-/221763815393

Ebay has some 46$ meggers that are just as sketchy, but ^that one goes to 2500vdc, the others only 1000vac at 50hz. and other hand cranked versions for 50$ to 500..

I can't estimate in my head what resistance a rather large alternator will be just due to its own self capacitance.. so i think you need a dc version to tell you if there is dc corona showing up.. and i see no need to dunk the alternator in water to perform this test.. if the windings are damaged i should think it would be obvious to see them shifted out of their place due to the shock of hitting the ground.


There are a number of options for efficiently extracting power from a turbine if all you want is to dump it into a waterheater, i'll list a few of them, anyhow, it appears the case that you can buy 4500 watt 240vac water heater elements for ~$7 each plus shipping.. but it can cost a great deal if you want a custom stainless water heater with a large number of water heater elements installed.
If you want to limit the number of heater elements as much as possible then you have to go the more expensive route of varying the power electrically.

There was someone here on the forum who had a lot of failures building a mosfet pulse width modulated resistor to make an efficient dump load, but its not impossible for you to do.
One option you have is simply buy a 240volt 20 or 30 hp 3 phase VFD.. and hook up a brake resistor.. use two or three 240v 4500watt water heater elements in parallel.. the vfd will hold the DC bus down by pwm'ing the brake resistor (most of the old dumb ones will not know if the power comes from a high line or a motor back feeding the system). you will then have 3 phase regulated ac power too.. but if you try and draw power from the vfd (say its set for nominal 240v 60h) then the problem is drawing more power than the turbine can deliver will trip the VFD off due to low input line voltage, so this is a potential disaster waiting to happen. --unless you want to install a ~340 volt dc battery system.. or set up a load management system to tell you how much power is available.

Another option you have is configuring a large number of relays or ac solid state relays to switch out the water heater elements (turning them on in binary code) according to the windspeed.. this can get complicated-- for example:
If you use a bunch of voltage controlled relays or some less expensive mechanism, you can get probably get close to 90% capture of the available wind power with i'm guessing.. 10 voltage controlled relays(or an arduino) and a few hundred diodes (look up diode logic) (or use an arduino) , and 12 solid state relays(3 per phase) and 12 water heater elements sized to draw about 5,10,20,40 amps from each phase.--at max output all of the will be turned on, so that's 75 amps per phase. (reduce all the numbers accordingly)
^ that could end up really expensive if you want to run 480 volts because you'll either need to find 480 volt heater elements or you'll need twice as many 240v heater elements, each in series to limit their power consumption.
but you can see that if you have an enslaved fairy to turn on and off the 12 switches.. you can get any arbitrary power level from 5 amps to 75 per phase, in 5 amp increments.


Another option you have is running a bunch of motor run capacitors in series with a number of water heater elements, (three required minimum).. this has potential to be the simplest but it may end up being expensive due to the number of motor run capacitors you'll need to put in series with the water heater. The mechanism by which this works is when the voltage and frequency goes up, the current flowing through the capacitors rises with both frequency and current, so you get a natural cubic function and you have the potential to very effectively capture the available wind power.

You'll have to buy a lot of large capacitors.. some folks here have experimented with running electrolytic caps back to back.. but you don't want to buy those new either. --this is where bumping the voltage to 480 would really help because motor run caps are easily found in 600 volt ratings, and you need a fourth as many microfarads when you double the voltage.
My wife says I'm not just a different colored rubik's cube, i am a rubik's knot in a cage.

metalmangler

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Re: Rebuilding a crashed 10kw turbine and tower.....first post
« Reply #2 on: June 03, 2015, 07:16:58 AM »
The vfd idea is similar to useing the grid tie inverter that came with this (grid tech II,zantrax) and powering ordinary houshold 240 volt heaters, bugaboo is that it needs the "grid" or a 240v ac input to look at, and a 240 volt inverter and required battery bank are going to cost $$$,
Any realy cheap way of getting 240v ac?, probably only need 2 amps....

And buying most things(say a cheap megger) from the US insnt cost effective because of exorbidant shipping costs(e bay is the worst), duty, taxes,high exchange rates,long, wait times,and no possibility of returning anything defective.

If it is something actualy made in the USA and the company knows the ins and outs of shipping to Canada it can be just fine,
for some reason buying stuff out of Texas works out good.

So big wire and an "ardino" to switch the relays sounds like the most cost effective, efficent and reliable.

The main use for the power will be to privide auxilary heat in the winter and domestic hot water pre heat for a propane
demand heater.Will use  thermo syphon loops and cast iron heaters.
The house is almost exactly at the 45th parallel  in a Marine environment, our winters are cloudy, cold and often very
windy.The pv system here is optomised for the low light conditions and I will design the wind turbine system to be
optomised for high wind and full output . We see minus 20*F and howling wind.Turning that into warm cast iron will be
excellent.Wouldn't mind that today, its 40*F and raining.

Get it done quick no matter how long it takes

metalmangler

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Re: Rebuilding a crashed 10kw turbine and tower.....first post
« Reply #3 on: June 24, 2015, 09:28:14 PM »
update on turbine rebuild
got a megger (tes-3660) and the coils in the generator come up good
got a 240 to 600 volt 15 kva transformer and it tests good
TO DO
build blades, wood ,epoxy and fibreglass, with carbon fibre roving between the laminations, polyurathane leading edge wear strip
build tilt up mechanism for 60 foot tower, thinking of moving the hinge 15 feet off the ground and casting a 5000 lb counter weight
onto the tower bottom, those numbers are top of head and will be revised by using math, this also has potential to be used as a
trebuchet....also have aquired some good sized hydraulic components (all the cylinders from a case 580B + a bunch of pins and bushings from same and new 3 inch bearings and shafting
or to put it another way, I am not climbing up there because I have to, only if I want to...
build a device that will vary the resistance load that the turbine will see, "ardino" controled linear actuator that closes contacts on
progressivly more or less resistanc in the form of water heating elements
build thermal storage battey also known as retrofitting the 1200 gallon (imperial) sistern in the basement
scrounge a bunch of I beam and direct burial wire
Have aquired a camera and will start taking pictures
Get it done quick no matter how long it takes

JW

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Re: Rebuilding a crashed 10kw turbine and tower.....first post
« Reply #4 on: June 24, 2015, 10:26:50 PM »
If you need help posting pictures just ask. They can be uploaded to the forum or they can be remotely hosted.

SparWeb

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Re: Rebuilding a crashed 10kw turbine and tower.....first post
« Reply #5 on: July 20, 2015, 12:58:04 AM »
I'm looking forward to seeing your progress.
I wouldn't recommend the counter-balanced tilt tower idea.  Just build a 30-foot long gin pole, hinge from the same base as the tower (on its own separate hinge) and all the loads will be much lower.  Sure the hydraulic tilt up works, it just gets 3x heavier (in both steel and concrete) so it costs more.

Oh, yea, and WELCOME to Fieldlines :)
No one believes the theory except the one who developed it. Everyone believes the experiment except the one who ran it.
System spec: 135w BP multicrystalline panels, Xantrex C40, DIY 10ft (3m) diameter wind turbine, Tri-Star TS60, 800AH x 24V AGM Battery, Xantrex SW4024
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metalmangler

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Re: Rebuilding a crashed 10kw turbine and tower.....first post
« Reply #6 on: July 23, 2015, 08:36:19 PM »
Hi Sparweb
Was out tinkering in my newly installed sea can/shop.Had to hang the tail assembly for the bergey from the roof so I can build a bench
under it, and fill the underneath of the bench with stuff that is in my was............so I can drag the 60 foot monople tower a bit closer
to my welder, and start working on the hinge.
I am going to cut up some larger hydraulic cylinder rod as  pintles and hand forge the straps out of 3 x 1/2, or if I can get more
cylinder rods with big eyes on the ends I will just make a jig and drop those right in the concrete and use whatever is called for as
the pintle, no forgeing that way ,all scrap, shiny cromed scrap....probly have the grease fittings still on.
 Started reading up on the arduinio ,oh shugar I forced myself to read the programing primer on the web site, uses the example of making a light blink, and I can almost wrap my brain around it.
I am definitely going to need more bench space, gona rain tommorow, gona build bench till I run out of wood, 40 feet down one whole side of my sea can shop.
Trying some pics.
MetalMangler
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SparWeb

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Re: Rebuilding a crashed 10kw turbine and tower.....first post
« Reply #7 on: July 24, 2015, 12:03:59 AM »
Careful dipping your toes into the Arduino waters.  Go too deep and you won't come up for air until a few years later, pasty skinned, wearing Star Wars t-shirts!

Strip off that chrome if you're going to embed the rod in the concrete - I think I understand what you intend to do there...

Nice tower.  Note that a Bergey could overload it during those nasty tropical storms that blow up the seaboard every year (don't know how exposed you happen to be to those).
No one believes the theory except the one who developed it. Everyone believes the experiment except the one who ran it.
System spec: 135w BP multicrystalline panels, Xantrex C40, DIY 10ft (3m) diameter wind turbine, Tri-Star TS60, 800AH x 24V AGM Battery, Xantrex SW4024
www.sparweb.ca