Author Topic: My 17' Turbine so far  (Read 61792 times)

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Boss

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #66 on: October 30, 2011, 10:22:46 AM »
Good looking system, well done
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kitestrings

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #67 on: November 01, 2011, 04:15:38 PM »
Nekit,

This looks great.  I'd say your seeing some pretty respectable output.

I was trying to piece togetehr the dump load information.  9- 6.8 ohm elements (2-l l, 1 series), so I get the 20.4 ohm calc.  They are wired in wye?  And, your dumping at around 400VAC, keeping the DC input safely below the inverter input I assume.  So you're pulling maybe 20A acrossed each group, or maybe ~8 kW?  I'm curious how it impacts the turbine speedm when in operates (if you seen it at pre-set), since it is an on - or off loading as I understand it.

Also, you had a three postion angle.  You started at the lowest angle?

Nice stuff.  thanks for sharing.

~kitestrings

nekit

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #68 on: November 01, 2011, 10:15:24 PM »
Nekit,

This looks great.  I'd say your seeing some pretty respectable output.

I was trying to piece togetehr the dump load information.  9- 6.8 ohm elements (2-l l, 1 series), so I get the 20.4 ohm calc.  They are wired in wye?  And, your dumping at around 400VAC, keeping the DC input safely below the inverter input I assume.  So you're pulling maybe 20A acrossed each group, or maybe ~8 kW?  I'm curious how it impacts the turbine speedm when in operates (if you seen it at pre-set), since it is an on - or off loading as I understand it.

Also, you had a three postion angle.  You started at the lowest angle?

Nice stuff.  thanks for sharing.

~kitestrings

Yep everything you figure is correct, but should be max approx 6kw at 400V or 15A. 

When I turn on the Dumpload it drops the RPM and voltage drops approximately 50, so should slow it slightly when the load comes on.  So far gen hasn't put out more than 310VDC.

The angle that your refering to I assume is the tail angle?  If so its in the middle angle currently.  I can also add lead shot to the end of the tail in sections in the tube.

Thanks,
Rob
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kitestrings

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #69 on: November 03, 2011, 12:31:09 PM »
nekit,

I may have missed that 400V was your target DC threshold (limit for the inverter), but even at that wouldn't your AC be around 285V, or (15 * 285 * 1.732 = ) 7.4 kW?  I'm sure i've missed somthing here, sorry to belabor.

Anyway, overall it sounds relatively 'soft' - the impact to the turbine when you connect your dump.

~kitestrings

nekit

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #70 on: November 13, 2011, 09:24:05 PM »
Updates:

Kitstrings 400VAC is my target max Volts which should be about 520 VDC going into the inverter.

So far I haven't had the dump come on except when then power went out once.  Worked fine.

Hit 350 VDC today and 4000W  it was a 42 mph gust.  Everything seemed to me working fine, but I got nervous and shut it down for a few hours while the wind was 35-40 mph with gusts to 50.  Shut down fine.  I turned the dump load on to slow it down some and the flipped the shorting brake in about 35-40 mph winds.  Stopped fine.

Changed the tail angle to 18 degrees two days ago, seems to be more consistannt in generating with less fluctuating in and out of furled. Furls about 25-30mph.
 
Yesterday generated 28 kWh for the day with an average wind speed 13.5mph.

If I hadn't shut it down I think it might have got close to 40 kWh today, but better safe than sorry. 


« Last Edit: June 17, 2018, 08:59:12 PM by JW »

nekit

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #71 on: November 13, 2011, 09:45:41 PM »
One other thing I wanted to note was how I balanced my blades.  I have the Royal Wind blades and the heaviest was about 2# heavier than the lightest.  I think it is just the different densities of woods.  I didn't want to add a bunch of weight to the mounting flange.  By adding it to the tips I was able to use a lot less weight.  I wasn't sure if this was going to work so I didn't post it till I was sure.  It's been running for several month and seems to be fine.

To add the weight to the tips I figured out how much weight each tip needed, then I figured weight of lead solid in a 3/4" hole bored into the tip.  By figuring the area need I was able to figure how deep I needed to bored the 3/4" paddle bit into the tip.  I was concerned that lead might work its way out of the tip, so before I poured in the molten lead I drove a stainless nail perpendicular to the hole to keep the lead in place.  I then poured molten lead in the hole.  It's better to have the hole a little extra deep, you can easily drill some out if it's too heavy later.

In the lightest blade I used two holes, as you can see in the picture.  Not sure if this would work on other style blades, but worked well on the meaty profile of the GOE222 blades I have.  Hope this helps someone.

« Last Edit: June 19, 2018, 11:08:13 PM by JW »

jarrod9155

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #72 on: November 13, 2011, 10:44:39 PM »
I have the the same inverter and similar generator with 20 foot goe 222 . That's impressive 28 kwh the most I saw last march was 16 in a day  and the bearings lock up the day after . If you get a chance what is your updated mppt tables look like. . Just got  my new mill up and running ,but no real wind yet .

SparWeb

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #73 on: November 13, 2011, 10:45:27 PM »
It looks fine to me.  There's a way to calculate how well your design will hold but frankly I'm not concerned about the lead weights, so I won't bother to do the research to prove it's okay.  Forgive my laziness!

I also see the strip protecting the leading edge.  You're all set for years of service.

How much did each blade weigh before balancing?  I'd be worried if the variation in blade weight was more than 10-15%, but I couldn't guess what is the baseline weight of a blade for a 17-foot rotor, to judge a 2 pound difference.
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nekit

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #74 on: November 14, 2011, 08:52:53 PM »
Jarrod9155 the MPPT table is still the same one I listed earlier in this post. The more I observe the turbine, wind and inverter outputs the more I think the table is off.  It seems to be producing well, the data just doesn't seem to matchup. The more data I get I'll play with the table.

SparWeb the blades weighed 18-20#, so that's within the 10-15%. I thought it was a little bit much, but Dave at Royal wind said it happens with the differences in wood.  They did seem to balance out fine in the end. 

jarrod9155

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #75 on: November 15, 2011, 07:58:09 PM »
Back when I had 18 foot ash blades from royal wind  I had a mppt table that was well dialed in spent close to 4 months tweaking it but I lost it and all my notes long story  . The 20 foot popular blades I have now  are not working out as well , they flex more and one blade is way heavier .but for the aurora  I wonder if you have noticed the same things I have like the blades will take off before the inverter applies  load and then applies to much load causes them to stall expecialy if you try to keep a tsr below 7 .

nekit

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #76 on: November 16, 2011, 10:41:18 PM »
Back when I had 18 foot ash blades from royal wind  I had a mppt table that was well dialed in spent close to 4 months tweaking it but I lost it and all my notes long story  . The 20 foot popular blades I have now  are not working out as well , they flex more and one blade is way heavier .but for the aurora  I wonder if you have noticed the same things I have like the blades will take off before the inverter applies  load and then applies to much load causes them to stall expecialy if you try to keep a tsr below 7 .

The inverter does have 1.5 sec lag so I do see what your talking about, but it doesn't slow it to a stall. It seems to just make it fluctuate in gust wind.

kitestrings

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #77 on: November 18, 2011, 02:08:48 PM »
Nekit, or others,


Sorry to be so long getting back to this, but...

Quote
Kitstrings 400VAC is my target max Volts which should be about 520 VDC going into the inverter.

If your target is 520VDC, wouldn't the RMS phase volts/ph be 214 VAC; VL =~371.  With a resistance of 20.4 ohms, I would have expected the phase current to be just over 10A, or about 6.7 kW assuming it is balanced (which I think it is now).

Alternatively, if as you say the most the generator has put out is 310 VDC, wouldn't the Vph =~127; VL = 221; Ip = ~6A, or roughly 2.5 kW?

Please understand, I'm not trying to be smart @#SS, just would like to understand it if I'm off-base.  Perhaps the resistance changes as they heat up, like say a light filament, or perhaps the 15A was measured prior to your reconfiguration?

One more question, I assume you parallel one pair to just hit somewhere near the desired risitance with the individual elements that you had, but logically the pair is not loaded the same as the third element in each group.  Just curious how close to capacity of the individaul elements it put you?

~kitestrings

nekit

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #78 on: November 19, 2011, 11:37:58 PM »
KItestring
Not sure if I'm following your question. My math may be a bit off, but seems to be working well.  I'm only using the dump load as a fail safe if the system get close to my 600 VDC.  Haven't needed to use it yet, 400vdc and approx 5000 watts is the max. I've seen from the gen at about 45mph gust.  I have turned on the dump at about 300vdc and it just slightly slows the turbine more than the inverter does.

The resistors measure pretty close to their rated sums and are even between phases.

I've had average 16mph winds the last two days and have generated 32kwh and 34kwh each day.  I'm pretty happy with that.

Thanks

nekit

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #79 on: November 20, 2011, 09:14:05 AM »
By midnight last night my inverter exported 36kwh for the day.  Even better than I thought it would.

LifeIsGood

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #80 on: December 22, 2011, 12:43:14 PM »
nekit

My wife and I are new at this discussion about wind mills. We have picked this up by reading the book 'homebrew wind power'. We are currently attempting to build a 20' to 21' wind mill similar to your 17', and we see your work is impeccable. Having seen that I cannot sleep well, I requested to become a member of the forum to speak with you because we think your work is amazing. We are also attempting to reach 100' feet up with a large surface to cover, our alternator is slightly different, as we are using 12 strands of 18 AWG with 24 wraps to hook up in series and parallel to achieve our 4.3 Volts at 60 RPM's. We have tested and proven its working so we continued wrapping. We have completed all 15 coils in their individual casts with west system 105, 206 epoxy resin from Ellsworth adhesives. We are currently stuck on a few dilemmas or questions if you're willing to share your knowledge. Q#1: should we use a different adhesive to cast all 15 coils together? Q#2: are we tying all three phases together to start, then exit the cast with just the three? I'm not sure what your fourth slip ring is for? Our magnets are on a 22" diameter steel plate being 1/2" thick, also our 1.5"x.75"x3" magnets fastened between 22" and 16" diameters on our plates. We have vents in the fist plate accepting air flow and then being vented perpendicular once air is in side alternator to pass over both sides of stator. Finally, Q#3: Not sure if I can do this, but possibly contact your over the phone because I'm not too brilliant with computers and it takes me quit a bit of time to type.  I can give you info if you wouldn't mind answering further questions over the phone?

ghurd

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #81 on: December 22, 2011, 08:50:19 PM »
One giant paragraph is hard to follow.

It would be good to hit the "Enter" key every so often. [enter, twice]

It puts a break between all your questions. [enter, twice]

All that info in a single string is very hard to follow.  [enter, once]
I can not type either.  [enter, once]
Or spell.    [enter, twice]

Type out your questions.
It would be good to start a new topic.
Mr. nekit may not know an answer someone else knows.
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nekit

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #82 on: December 23, 2011, 08:11:33 AM »
nekit

My wife and I are new at this discussion about wind mills. We have picked this up by reading the book 'homebrew wind power'. We are currently attempting to build a 20' to 21' wind mill similar to your 17', and we see your work is impeccable. Having seen that I cannot sleep well, I requested to become a member of the forum to speak with you because we think your work is amazing. We are also attempting to reach 100' feet up with a large surface to cover, our alternator is slightly different, as we are using 12 strands of 18 AWG with 24 wraps to hook up in series and parallel to achieve our 4.3 Volts at 60 RPM's. We have tested and proven its working so we continued wrapping. We have completed all 15 coils in their individual casts with west system 105, 206 epoxy resin from Ellsworth adhesives. We are currently stuck on a few dilemmas or questions if you're willing to share your knowledge. Q#1: should we use a different adhesive to cast all 15 coils together? Q#2: are we tying all three phases together to start, then exit the cast with just the three? I'm not sure what your fourth slip ring is for? Our magnets are on a 22" diameter steel plate being 1/2" thick, also our 1.5"x.75"x3" magnets fastened between 22" and 16" diameters on our plates. We have vents in the fist plate accepting air flow and then being vented perpendicular once air is in side alternator to pass over both sides of stator. Finally, Q#3: Not sure if I can do this, but possibly contact your over the phone because I'm not too brilliant with computers and it takes me quit a bit of time to type.  I can give you info if you wouldn't mind answering further questions over the phone?

LifeisGood

Thanks for the compliments.  It good to see others building similar systems.

I'm not sure I follow what you are using in your coil windings, as far as wire and style.  Is your system going to be grid tied or batteries?

Your Questions:

Q1:  Casting the stator.  I'm a race car and aerospace fabricator for a living, so I use West Systems all the time.  It very easy to use with the pump mixing system.  The bad side is it is very low temp.  If you look at the specs you can see.  It may be fine.  If you have already cast around you coils you are commited to West Systems there  and thats the place that it would burn up if it was going to happen.  The rest of the casting probably isn't as important, but not sure on you design.  You may want to cast the rest in layers to keep the resin from boiling or cracking.

If you hadn't done any casting yet I would recommend plain old Vinyl Ester resin.  It has a much higher temp rating.  If you had lots of money to burn.  Resin Services out of Michigan has a high temp casting resin that is perfect, but would cost hundreds of dollars.

Q2: The fourth slip ring is just for a ground.  Probably don't need it, but the pivot irrigator that the slip rings came out of had extras.

Q3:  Where are you located?  I'm sure we can get in contact if the forum doesn't work for you.  The nice thing about the forum is other can view, learn, and teach too.  Their are many others on this forum who are much more knowledgeable than me on the workings of the wind.

Thanks,
Rob L


LifeIsGood

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #83 on: December 27, 2011, 01:35:49 PM »
Thanks for responding to our questions.
We are leaving the option open for now as to our windmill being grid tied or battery. 

Our wire is 12 in hand 18 AWG with 24 turns per coil.  (3 in parallel, 4 in series)  We are still using 3 phase AC with 5 coils per phase.

As far as the stator discussion, we looked into our epoxy temperature rating and we ran a few tests ourselves using thermal imaging to measure temperature.  We hooked a coil up to 120 volts and saw that at 120 volts 16 amps, the temp reached 250F and rising slowly, which resulted in a slight crack in the epoxy.  We then tried another coil at 120 volts 21 amps  reaching 360F and rising, which resulted in softening of the epoxy and some smoke production.  To my belief, the voltage is irrelevant and the amperage is creating the heat, we just wanted to test for heat production.

We purchased our wire from Applied Magnets, and the specs on the wire itself is 392F and through our tests, we are getting close to that temperature before affecting the resin.  What temps are we supposed to be reaching?  Are we supposed to be able to reach a temperature so close to affecting our wire? 

We are located in Wisconsin and will work on getting some pictures of our progress to post soon.  We will keep posting to the message board and hopefully we can stay in contact that way for now.

Thanks again!


LifeIsGood

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #84 on: December 27, 2011, 02:49:04 PM »
One more question...

What does your stator consist of and what resources did you use?

Thanks!

nekit

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #85 on: December 27, 2011, 09:43:13 PM »
Thanks for responding to our questions.
We are leaving the option open for now as to our windmill being grid tied or battery.  

Our wire is 12 in hand 18 AWG with 24 turns per coil.  (3 in parallel, 4 in series)  We are still using 3 phase AC with 5 coils per phase.

As far as the stator discussion, we looked into our epoxy temperature rating and we ran a few tests ourselves using thermal imaging to measure temperature.  We hooked a coil up to 120 volts and saw that at 120 volts 16 amps, the temp reached 250F and rising slowly, which resulted in a slight crack in the epoxy.  We then tried another coil at 120 volts 21 amps  reaching 360F and rising, which resulted in softening of the epoxy and some smoke production.  To my belief, the voltage is irrelevant and the amperage is creating the heat, we just wanted to test for heat production.

We purchased our wire from Applied Magnets, and the specs on the wire itself is 392F and through our tests, we are getting close to that temperature before affecting the resin.  What temps are we supposed to be reaching?  Are we supposed to be able to reach a temperature so close to affecting our wire?  

We are located in Wisconsin and will work on getting some pictures of our progress to post soon.  We will keep posting to the message board and hopefully we can stay in contact that way for now.

Thanks again!



I would suggest that you figure out what you are wanting, grid tied or battery, so you can wind the stator and design the rest of the turbine accordingly.

Your coil windings seem crazy to me.   I've never heard of 12 in hand. Seems like it would be very low voltage with 24 turns?

You want to keep stator temps as low as possible.  You just want a resin that can hold up to the extremes.
One more question...

What does your stator consist of and what resources did you use?

Thanks!
I'm not sure what you mean?
« Last Edit: December 27, 2011, 09:46:26 PM by nekit »

tecker

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #86 on: December 28, 2011, 12:20:43 AM »
I watched your videos . They show some excellent work coming to bare . The growl is the stator buck as it cuts in and vibrates the bearings slightly you can play with the air gap if you like .

LifeIsGood

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #87 on: December 29, 2011, 12:59:22 AM »
Yes, we're aiming for 48 volts, and we found an inverter that is pretty accommodating. We are purchasing most of our materials from applied magnets, and have viewed some inverters on their website, (the Xantrex XW6048, 48V Grid-tie/Off-grid Hybrid Inverter - 120/240 volt AC split-phase/60 Hz) leaving us with some additional options. We're very new at this so if you see any obvious problems please let us know.
 
We appreciate your help, you have already saved us from using our inadequate stator thank you!!!

Like you said though, we're committed to our glue now.  We will probably finish the stator since we're on the final step to cast all of them. We want to continue moving forward, so we'll have to run some tests with this one then come back and replace it if need be.

I'm sorry I wasn't clear with my explanation on the coils; what I did was chose a wire size to fit in my 1/2" clearance. 12 wires lined up side by side (18 AWG) gives me 1/2" wide, then all I did was solder them in series 4 times and parallel 3 of these in order to achieve around a 14 AWG (or slightly larger) wire at 96 wraps. I'm not sure if that clarifies it for you?  

Maybe in our next stator we can throw in a few more wraps, depending on what we see from this one. What we meant before when we asked what your stator consists of was how many wraps, and with what size wire? You had said your voltage is slightly higher?

kenl

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #88 on: December 29, 2011, 07:52:37 PM »
Very nice turbine, read this whole post last night and all I could think was wow, this guy does nice work. Thanks for documenting the process and sharing.

kenny
seemed like a good idea at the time

nekit

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #89 on: February 29, 2012, 07:46:05 PM »
Developed a nasty vibration the other day.  Brought down the tower and thought something had come loose.  It turn out to be one of the wires at the slip rings.  It was running on two phase, making power just had a bad vibration from the missing phase.  Reconnected and all is well.  Had wind gust to 50 mph at my wind anemometer today, which is 10m up the tower.  The turbine probably saw 60mph.  Seems to handle it fine.  Made 30kwh so far today.

nekit

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #90 on: March 07, 2012, 08:05:19 AM »
Changed the MPPT curve with Rob Beckers help.  Here's the new curve.  I did flattened it out around 135VDC to help it pass through that area of the curve that the alternator has a vibration, other wise it is the same as below and a more aggressive curve than I had.

When I finally was able to start get frequency readings, to figure Rpm, I realized I was letting it run too fast and out of TSR of 6 that I was aiming for.  I should have figured that out a long time ago.

Windy days here in Indiana.  Set a new record for yesterday 43kwh for the day.  Today should even be better.

Wind (m/s)   RPM   Freq. (Hz)   Heat (W)   Eff. (%)   DC (V)   P (W)
2.5   55   7.4   3   97%   68   31
3   66   8.8   5   96%   81   81
3.5   77   10.3   9   96%   93   149
4   88   11.8   16   95%   106   238
4.5   100   13.3   25   94%   118   351
5   111   14.7   37   94%   130   491
6   133   17.7   76   93%   153   857
7   155   20.6   139   91%   175   1355
8   177   23.6   234   90%   197   2003
9   199   26.5   370   89%   217   2814
10   221   29.5   559   88%   237   3804
11   243   32.4   810   87%   256   4985
11.9   263   35.1   1101   86%   272   6222

klsmurf

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #91 on: March 07, 2012, 08:51:54 AM »
Hey Nekit,

Glad to see you getting everything tuned in. I've been following your thread from the beginning and am very impressed!

If you don't mind, what part of the great Hoosier state are you from? I'm in the northern part, half way between Indy and Chi-town just off I-65. I'ld be up for a road trip to see your turbine if you don't mind visitors.

Kevin
" A man's got to know his limitations " ------ Harry Callahan

nekit

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #92 on: March 08, 2012, 10:11:39 PM »
Crazy Winds yesterday.  20.2 average wind for the day with gusts to 45mph.  Generated 55 kWh for the day.  Blowing strong from Midnight to Midnight.  Had several peaks of 6500w.

nekit

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #93 on: April 30, 2012, 09:18:10 AM »
With spring here I finally getting around to some lightning upgrades that I've been wanting to do.

When I originally installed the foundations for the tower and each of the 4 guy wire mounts I installed 8' lightning rods in the bottom of the 4' holes of the foundations.  These rods are connected to the reinforcing cages in the concrete which is connected to the tower and the guy wires.  I also installed a rod at the base of the tower by the shorting/brake switch and at the inverter in my shop.  At each of these locations I also have Delta lightning protection devices.

This last weekend I had a trencher to install my FIT solar and wind.  Since I had the trencher decided to add grounding lines running between the tower base and each of the guy foundations.  Trenched 18" deep installed a 8' ground rod half way between each, and added an additional rod at each guy wire support for the cables to ground to.  All the grounding locations are tied together with #6 solid copper and some much larger copper that I had at the base of the tower.

I know that I can still take a hit, but hopefully this helps me sleep.  We had a hit at the large 900KW 300' Turbine that is less than a mile from me the other morning and it made think.  I'm also hoping that it works as a lightning rod and takes most of the hits compared to my little 100' machine.

I used a lot of info from Rob Beckers site Solacity.com for the lightning protection info.  Thanks Rob.  I'm also building some surge protectors from a bunch of varistors that should clamp down at 600V with a 170KA capacity.  These should help as the Delta surge protection doesn't kick in till thousands of volts.



« Last Edit: June 17, 2018, 08:26:51 PM by JW »

nekit

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #94 on: April 30, 2012, 09:47:35 AM »
Thought I would also update on status of my project while I'm at it.

I've had the turbine running since July last year.  So far no major problems.  Have seen winds of 50-60mph.  Has maxed out at 6500W peak, 55kwh for the day and total of 2700kwh for the past 10 months.  I think this would have been higher, but my MPPT programming was wrong for the first 8 months and is making much better power now.  I also shut it down for the first few months whenever I had a major wind event happened, not sure what it could handle.  Now I leave it on unless something really crazy passes through.

I still could add more weight to the tail and have it furl a little later, and probably will.  For the most part the Inverter keeps it under control and the furling just feathers it out of the extreme winds.

I have had a power failure in 40mph+ winds and the dump load keeps it under control.

Lessons Learned. 

Use an aggressive power curve to keep the turbine under control and at TSR. 

The generator has a growl at about 10mph that vibrates the tower.  It's just the cogging of the gen at a certain load, around 140VDC in my case.  I've gotten used to it, but if I ever redesign the generator I'll try and use a design with less cogging.

I've loved designing, building and maintaining this turbine.  Lately solar has gotten so cheap, from a $ per W stand point, and low maintenance . Solar makes more $ sense.  That being said I would still build my turbine, as I love it.

nekit

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #95 on: May 08, 2012, 02:09:02 PM »
Added some more lightning protection  I built these varistors in parallel for surge protection.  They are rated at 420 DCV an 22K A each.  4 of them on each leg is 88K a per leg or 176K A total capacity.  Four have one leg goes to the + DC side and one goes to the common and 4 have one leg -DC and one leg common.

They should ground out at 420 VDC and protect at a much lower voltage than the Delta surge protection.

taylorp035

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #96 on: May 08, 2012, 02:15:21 PM »
To solve your vibration issues, maybe you could add a mass - spring damper to change the frequency and damping characteristics of the tower.  Or even just adding some weight to the vibrating tower area, which would lower the frequency at which it vibrates.

nekit

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #97 on: June 30, 2012, 10:15:38 AM »
Added nearly 5kw of solar.  Not nearly as exciting as wind, but it sure puts out nice stead power.  System consist of 20- Evergreen Solar 220W panels that I got from Sun Elec. for 78 cents/watt and Power One 4200 Inverter.  Built the mounting system myself.  6" dia. tubes on each end of frames made of 1" square tubing.  Each frame holds 4 panels.  Tiltable for summer and winter angles.  Local power company is paying me Feed In Tariff of 30cents/kwh for solar and 17cents/kwh for wind.

nekit

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Re: My 17' Turbine so far
« Reply #98 on: June 30, 2012, 10:36:48 AM »
Figured while I was updating I'd show my solar hot water system.  It consists of 4 panels of 15 vacuum tubes each for 60 tubes.  I have a 100 gallon Stiebel Eltron tank w/exchanger on a closed loop system w/Ghrundfos pump.  Supplies all my domestic hot water and supplements my radiant floor heat.(very little)  I also have a backup on demand heater.  Been up and running for about 4 years.  For the $ this system is a no brainer.