Hi guys
Now that winter is pretty much over! Or at least it is here (Northern Ireland) its time to start a new wind turbine project! But what should I build? Any suggestions would be most welcome
I have spent the winter collecting all the parts needed to build another two 8ft dual rotor Hugh Piggott mills, but I like a challenge and would be very tempted to go a bit bigger!
This is what I have to play with
56 2 x 1 x ½ N40s
15lbs of 22 AWG wire
2 Very heavy duty stub axles and bearings from a forklift truck - you could hang the wings of a 747 on these!
Spare 80ft free standing mast
The system I have is 48v and my average wind speed is 17-20 mph but I regularly see 30-35mph with gales to 60mph occasionally
I mentioned in an email to Hugh about building a double stator 4 rotor unit and in his reply he mentioned
"If you build an alternator with two stators and four sets of magnets then you will get twice the power at the same speed.
If you instead put all the magnets onto rotors of double diameter, and all the coils into one big stator, then each coil will also produce twice the voltage. So you have double the coils but each coil can produce twice the power with the same losses. The coils can actually produce four times as much power with the same efficiency but the losses are high so beware of overheating.
If you use all your magnets and coils on one alternator that is twice the diameter, you can get 4-8 times as much power instead of 2 times."
Has anyone tried this? I have seen it mentioned in a few old posts but without much detail or results about performance.
I am aware there are issues with cooling to overcome but I am very tempted to have a go! I would guess the blade size at maybe 14ft dia but its only a guess?
This would be my favoured plan at the moment but I am open to any ideas!
Many thanks in advance
Russell
