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Up and flying


By Hank, Section Homebrewed Electricity
Posted on Sat Dec 13, 2003 at 07:57:52 PM MST
Finally producing power

After almost an year of planning, scrounging, tinkering and building it's up and producing power.

Special thanks to this board especially the Dans, Ed and Hugh who's advice and help made this possible.

It stands about 45' high supported by guy wires on a 60' radius secured to the ground using home made "duckbill" anchors.
I'm using an 8' 2 bladed rotor and it starts in winds of 8-10 mph.
It starts to furl at about 40 mph winds and time will tell how long it will last.
The most current I've measured out of it was about 36 amps at 14.5 volts into the battery banks. This was during a gust estimated to be about 30-35 mph.
Have to complete my electronics and monitoring system to get reliable data. Line loss is a killer, 500 watts into the batteries and another 1000 watts in copper/line losses.

Having a hell of a lot of fun though,
Hank

Up and flying | 10 comments (10 topical)

Re: Up and flying (none / 0) (#1)
by drdongle on Sat Dec 13, 2003 at 08:29:39 PM MST

Looking good. Keep us informed.

Dr.D
Carpe Vigor, Dr.D



Re: Up and flying (none / 0) (#2)
by cevonk on Sat Dec 13, 2003 at 09:46:05 PM MST

Looks great!  :-)  How does it sound?

I like the colors.



Re: Up and flying (none / 0) (#3)
by charged on Sat Dec 13, 2003 at 11:58:04 PM MST

Put a heavy induction booster at the genny and a large capacitor bank at the battery bank. Pulse the capacitors into the batteries.

The induction booster is very simple. They use them in small electronic equipment all the time. Just make sure that the inductor winding has a very low resistance.

You need to short the genny output into the heavy inductor with a pulse. I single high voltage, high-power transistor can do it with a simple pulse generator. Put a scope across the inductor and watch the input pulse as you gradually increase the pulse width. You should see a little ramp during the input pulse, but NO STEADY DC. If you get the pulse too wide, you'll see some DC at the top of the input pulse ramp and that much is wasted power. Just keep the pulse-width a wee bit short of that DC point.

Then you need a single heavy-duty high-voltage diode with it's cathode attached to the positive connection on the inductor.

The lines going to the house are connected to the inductor's negative negative side and the Anode of the diode.

The lines at the house are connected to the capacitor bank. The diode lead is connected to the cap negative and the other lead goes to cap positive. The very first capacitors in the parallel bank should be several small 400v electrolytics, about 1000uf total. These will absorb the highest peaks of spikes coming down the lines. Then run 2ft jumpers to the BIG cap bank. Put three car-stereo 1F super-caps in series for a 330,000uf capacitance.

Then, set up a simple discharge circuit between the big caps and the batteries. Connect the capacitor bank common negative to the battery negative. Then put a HEAVY SCR in the capacitor positive lead going to the batteries.
Connect the Anode of a 5v ZENER DIODE to the SCR GATE. Connect the CATHODE of the zener to the CAPACITOR POSITIVE.

Put an analog meter on the caps so you can watch the voltage changes and then engage the genny.

You should see a fairly steady oscillation on the meter.

The caps will fill with the incoming spikes and when they reach 5v above battery voltage, the SCR will turn on and SLAM a high-current pulse into the batteries. Don't worry, the batteries will love it. No sulfating.

All your genny power will be converted to what amounts to "transient spikes" on the lines and  your line losses will disappear. CEMF is almost pure voltage, almost no real current. The capacitors convert these spikes back into usable current to charge your batteries.

The engineering community mostly ignores everything Tesla patented after 1890 or so.

This is one aspect of his "radiant energy" power transfer systems.

Enjoy!



Re: Up and flying quick rant (none / 0) (#4)
by bob golding on Sun Dec 14, 2003 at 06:21:05 AM MST

hi charged,
i  used to live in cambridge UK and know quite a few university engineers.  when i tried to  submit a Tesla coil as my degree project it was kicked out as fringe science. with  well informed engineers like that about it is not surprizing that  he is ignored. i thought it was  maybe a UK thing but alas seems  you have the same degree of ignorance over there as well. bit strange that someone who  more or less invented most of  the things we take for granted is unknown by people who should know better. opps  getting on my soapbox again back to my  VAWT project. Just to prove Teslacoils do exist have a look at our website WWW.HVFX.CO.UK
end of blatant plug.

[ Parent ]


Re: Up and flying quick rant (none / 0) (#5)
by kww on Sun Dec 14, 2003 at 07:22:07 AM MST

I'm off topic as well, but I have to comment on this.  I've observed that those who are way above and beyond the norm, like Bruce Lee in martial arts, Einstein in physics, Jesus in religion, etc., there seems to exist a large group(the norm) that reject the truth each of these great individuals have revealed.  So much so it's rather comical in a maddening sort of way.  I guess if you don't understand something most would rather pretend it's not real than learn about it. LOL  Many "teachers" I had seemed to be especially prone to such behavior. LOL  Beam me up Scotty!!!!! :-)
Kevin(mostly self-educated, with a b.s. degree I'll sell real cheap :-)

[ Parent ]


Re: Up and flying (none / 0) (#6)
by Hank on Sun Dec 14, 2003 at 07:27:53 AM MST

Hi Charged,

This sounds interesting.
Can you sketch out a schematic of this circuit or point me to where I can find one?

How would this circuit work with a charge controller when I have to divert the load. I'm thinking of using a Trace C40 charge controller.

This genny is pretty quiet, however at higher wind speeds you can hear it humming as the coils load up. The faster it goes the louder the the humming, it's single phase.

Thanks,
Hank

[ Parent ]



Re: Up and flying (none / 0) (#7)
by Electric Ed on Sun Dec 14, 2003 at 07:43:40 AM MST

And then, on the other hand, there is something to be said for keeping things simple.

Electric Ed

[ Parent ]



Re: Up and flying (none / 0) (#9)
by Victor on Sun Dec 14, 2003 at 10:02:14 AM MST

This is a boost converter. Nothing magic here, it can be usful for  DC to DC voltage converters , power point tracking ect. However kw in = kw out - losses
Victor

[ Parent ]


Re: Up and flying (none / 0) (#8)
by windstuffnow on Sun Dec 14, 2003 at 08:52:12 AM MST

  I share your excitement!! Although, my first one didn't work as well as yours, I was still quite happy and excited when it was up and it worked.

  I know, now that the machine is up and running, your mind is going a hundred miles an hour and contemplating the next machine... the addiction has begun...

Have Fun as I know you are!

Ed

Have Fun! Windstuff Ed



Re: Up and flying (none / 0) (#10)
by Nando on Sun Dec 28, 2003 at 01:39:15 PM MST

Congratulations for hte job done.

I is sad taht the industry is not realizing that to have generators producing low voltage are, lot of them, power limited by tehcabling to the battery or load.

With present technology, it would be best to have a high voltage generator with AC Voltage transmission.
At the load a converter is installed to hav emaximumpower transfer.

In your case, I see that you could reduce the losses to about 10 % so, instead of 2/3 power transmission losses just 10 % or around 1350 watts into the battery and 150 watts into the losses, also it may be possible to charge at lower wind velocity regimes and the charger(converter) can be supplied with MPPT to maximize the power harvesting.

Regards

Nando



Up and flying | 10 comments (10 topical)
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