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Friday the 13th
By DanB, Section Remote Living Posted on Sat Oct 14, 2006 at 04:41:23 PM MST
stators - tractor - heater

TomW has a dual rotor machine we built a couple years back which he's putting up soon. We built that for 48V, but he went with a 24V system. Pictured above George is making the connections to the lugs.

This is the new stator (3rd one now) for my 17' machine, which burned out (again) in mid sept. We put that back on last monday and got it back up. I've not made any other changes to the machine yet so I need to be careful in high winds. Soon we'll drop it again and lighten the tail a bit so it furls earlier.

Shawn got his stator ready for casting. This will be a 16 or 17' machine - we're not sure yet. It's much like my 17' machine, but the bearing/spindle/hub is larger, and the rotors are larger.

We started a small addition on our shop. This area will house the batteries/inverter etc and provide for some additional storage space.

Me on our new (old) tractor! It needs tires... otherwise it runs fine. I got this at the same auction where I got the steam engine.

A picture of the 20' wind turbine partly furled. We had very high winds last week - gusts of 75mph! This machine seems to handle it pretty well so far. The most power I saw from it was about 6KW. The alternator keeps the blades turning pretty slow even in high winds.

I got a bunch of 300 watt resistors off ebay to make heaters to regulate my batteries. Here we've assembled basically 3 1KW heaters. They'll be turned on/off by the aux. relays in my Trace inverter. If its really windy and both wind turbines are on this heater won't keep up, but most of the time it should do fine.

We built this box out of 2 x 12 and plywood to put the heater in.

We used some galvanized roofing material for heat shields/reflectors in the box.

Its not quite finished yet but close. We wired all 3 heaters to run together and ran it for a couple hours last night. It seems to work well - throws out lots of heat but the wood stays cool so I think it's reasonably safe. We'll put a grill on the front and hopefully get it installed here in the shop next week.

Friday the 13th | 7 comments (7 topical)

Re: Friday the 13th (3.00 / 0) (#1)
by stephent on Sat Oct 14, 2006 at 11:11:42 AM MST

Looks cold up there in the pics.
Anyway you could slant the resistors a bit (frontwards or backwards) to keep the higher ones out of the heat from the lower ones on the "dump load"/heater?
The higher ambient temp on the top ones will lead to grief if theres enough volts available.
Nice looking stators, doing anything different on this next one outside of earlier furling?
Been thinking of the burning problem--could it be that the closeness of the coils is inducing a bit of currant in each other, I think it would be an opposite currant, and bucking the voltage a bit in the coils (adjacent ones) and making that little "extra" bit of heat that's burning them? And if they are really touching--it could be just simple friction (they will have a slight vibration when making power) eating/rubbing the coil insulation away and shorting them.
Awww--it's too early (?) on a Sat morning for much thinking--I need some more coffee--it was a long hard week, yesterday WAS the 13th, and I slept in til 10am ish.

Re: Friday the 13th (3.00 / 0) (#2)
by DanB on Sat Oct 14, 2006 at 11:15:30 AM MST

yes, interesting thought about the lower resistors overheating the upper ones...
I think itll be OK, I ran it for a while last night and nothing seemed to get too hot. All of these resistors are running well below their rated wattage. I guess time will tell...

Im also setting it up so that the top ones come on first - the bottom ones will come on last so that should help a bit.

[ Parent ]

Re: Friday the 13th (3.00 / 0) (#3)
by phil b on Sat Oct 14, 2006 at 11:15:54 AM MST

I'm impressed with the heater. Very ingenious! Simple solutions are usually the best.
The stator appears to be red. Did you mix the color with the resin? What did you use?
Phil

Re: Friday the 13th (3.00 / 0) (#4)
by richhagen on Sat Oct 14, 2006 at 12:12:41 PM MST

Hi Dan, That's a nice heater, I'm contemplating building something similar, but much smaller, about 1KW or so. I've aquired nichrome wire for the elements, but I think I will build a galvanized steel box for it, or scalp one from something. The wood scares me a little because it is combustable. I know they build the commercial ones using plastic now as well, but failsafe and fool proof for me, I might miscalculate something and burn it up otherwise. Rich
'A Joule saved is a Joule made'

Re: Friday the 13th (3.00 / 0) (#5)
by mkseps on Sun Oct 15, 2006 at 10:02:29 AM MST

Nice Farmall H but it could use some fenders and a muffler. If you give me the serial number for this tractor I'll tell you when it was built. If it runs well and you got it for less than $1200, you got a steal.
Gene

Re: Friday the 13th (3.00 / 0) (#6)
by DanB on Sun Oct 15, 2006 at 11:17:52 AM MST

yes - kind of annoying. About 1 hour before I got that at auction, they sold two fenders for it for $10. Theres a good junk yard in the area anyhow (for tractors) - I can probably find stuff there.

[ Parent ]

Re: Friday the 13th (3.00 / 0) (#7)
by tesla man on Tue Oct 17, 2006 at 04:10:40 PM MST

another very efficient system to add to your air cooled "dump load", is to go switch to a used water heater tank.

by wiring the two heating elements in series , it will be able to handle any excess voltage the wind genny puts out

water "stores heat" extremely well..

and by adding a small water pump, and building up a hydronic heating system, you have the most efficient heating system, for a structure..

as the water can store the heat (for use later), and then be distributed by the pump, and valves, pipes, etc... to wherever it is needed..

or take a much longer shower..

I think some people call these, "wind - furnaces"..

nothing like working/ sleeping on a warm floor ...

Friday the 13th | 7 comments (7 topical)

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