Busy last couple weeks... Pictured above George is welding on Tim's tower base. Tim built the most recent 17' turbine up here. He's documented some of his project on his own site atstarkweather.com. Check out his site - he's got a great wind turbine spot and he's built the most beautiful log cabin. (mansion???)
Scotty finished Tims blades for him. Pictured above Tim applies linseed oil to them.
Tims tower base... The tower is basically identical to mine, it'll be 60' tall made from 10" diameter tubing. The base is a bit less overkill than mine was but it should be fine.
George finishes Tims tower top. (George doesn't really trust anybody else to do any welding lately....)
Tims tower top finished.
I bored out this hub to fit the shaft of my Fuking 'listeroid' diesel engine. We built a stator that should run well with the 2" dia x 1/2" thick NdFeB magnets (12 of them, on 12" rotors). The stator is wound with 4 strands of #15 gage wire & 29 turns per coil. I think (we'll see) I can charge batteries at about 2KW @650 rpm - we'll see soon. This will be nice - as it is now, I have a 5KW alternator head belted to it and I charge through my inverter. When we're doing that - the inverter is charging and we're running the house/shop off the generator. If we take much power from the system the generator slows down and the inverter rejects it. Better is to charge directly and run everything off the inverter. Also - when it's very cold, it's difficult to start the listeroid (the belt is stiff) - direct drive will solve that. I think this will be a big upgrade for the diesel.
Magnet rotors for the listeroid - later on we shrank a stainless steel band around them and cast vinyl ester around the magnets.
Poor Morwen keeps having flies land on her nose. The flies are relentless this fall...
This odd fellow came by to visit.. he's got a solar panel on the roof of his subaru. Not sure why actually - I thought it was a sun roof. (actually a very nice/clever fellow and he had us build him a wind turbine)
TomW (different TomW) came up to build a 20' wind turbine. He's winding his coils (45 turns per coil - 3 strands of #15 gage)
Toms stator ready to cast....
Tom H (we have two Tom H's up here) came up to build his tower. He's making couplers for a 40' tower made from 4" tubine for his 10' dia 'volvo brake disk windmill' that he made a couple years back.
People like to hang out on the gin pole....
TomH totes his tail.
Above are pictured the couplers we made for Tims tower. They're just like the ones for mine - made from 10" tubing and they clamp together.
Hopefully this all goes smoothly.... for the workers - it's a no beer policy till it's up and running.
Shawn came up last fall to build a 17' wind turbine. Now he's racing with Tim to get his tower up (he's likely going to lose). Oddly enough (and this is coincidence) - they own adjacent land and these two nearly identical 17' machines will be very close to one another.
Last Friday we cast the stator for TomW's 20' turbine. At the end of the day we took the lid off but we didn't risk removing the stator from the mold.
George hard at work...
Saturday we got most of the bits for Tims tower on the site. 3 strands (200' long) of 4 gage wire, couplers, tower top, tower base, cable, turnbuckles, bolts/nuts etc...
Tims wind turbine goes on top of a ridge - all of the anchors are into solid granite. Rich is drilling 1" diameter holes, 12" deep for anchors.
Saturday we got a plan... a couple of the anchors in place, the base located and the gin pole built. Then it rained.. and snowed.... more of that project tomorrow.
Detail of the coupler on the gin pole.
We welded a big pulley to the end of Tims gin pole.
Tom 'deburrs' the stator for his 20' turbine. It came out really nicely...
