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My generator


By TheSuperFantasma, Section Homebrewed Electricity
Posted on Wed May 16th, 2007 at 02:29:55 AM MST
Just wanted to share...

Greetings folks!

Here are 2 (two) pictures of the generator I have built. It is not connected to anything yet as I have not had the cash to buy some items to get the entire set up.

I currently have a car battery and the Xantrex c40 with its digital display collecting dust in my garage. I will be replacing the yawing system with the pipe in pipe.

I'm currently using the metal structure of an office chair as the yawing system.
it is pretty strong. I believe!!!

The other day it was pretty windy, at about 24 m.p.h and I saw the voltmeter reading 83 volts.

According to the site where I got this alternator, this unit is capable of producing 15 amps on its maximum capacity. They state in their specs that producing 87 volts will equal 10 or 11 amps.  How many watts is that? (I do not know how to determine the amperage on this thing.)

I still do not know what to use as a dump load once the battery has reached its charge capacity.

My apologies if this posting is taking up too much space, but for some reason I could not keep on posting on my original posting.



My generator | 5 comments (5 topical, 0 editorial)

Re: My generator (3.00 / 0) (#1)
by hiker (hiker.wild[at]yahoo[dot]com) on Wed May 16th, 2007 at 11:53:44 AM MST
(User Info)

nice..
what about some picts of the alt..[modifide car alt]
what type and so on.....
did you make your own blades for it?
WILD IN ALASKA


Re: My generator (3.00 / 0) (#2)
by TheSuperFantasma (Feliperey74@hotmail.com) on Wed May 16th, 2007 at 03:38:47 PM MST
(User Info)

Hello Hiker!

I bought the alt DC540 from http://www.windbluepower.com/ which is supposed to start producing 12V at 150 RPM.

I will take and post some closer pictures of the alternator and the blades once I get ready to replace the yawing system. Taking the entire unit down by my self is a pain in the rear!

Yes, I made my own blades. They are made out of cedar, 31 inches each long, making a little more than 5 feet in radius.

Here some other pictures.

Thanks for your comment! I will be posting more on this pretty soon!

 




TheSuperFantasma
[ Parent ]



Re: My generator (3.00 / 0) (#3)
by johnlm on Wed May 16th, 2007 at 05:32:59 PM MST
(User Info)

SuperF,

Upon looking at the site you bought the PMA from, you will notice that they show curves of open circuit voltage and short circuit current.  You will not get the 87 V output at the 11A short circuit current.  You will not be able to get more (and will get less) than the 10 or 11 amps into a battery at any reasonable RPM you can get out of your 5 ft prop. - except possibly if you leave it running in very high winds.  The correct way to calculate the power would be to multiply the charging battery voltage (say 14V) times the charging current of 10 amps to get 140 Watts.  I suspect you may only get up to 125W max out of that PMA after all the other losses are factored in.  In order to get 12V out at 150 RPM they had to rewind the stator with fairly small wire (AWG 22 maybe) to get enough turns (around 300 turns per phase)to get that output.  And the output current is limited by the resistance of the small diameter wire and the reactance of the core.  There is nothing wrong with this, just that it is not a high power PMA.  Ive rewound and rebuilt the armatures with NEOS on many of these alternators and get results similar to what the alternators on that site gets.  If all you are looking for with a direct drive prop is around 100W on that PMA it will probably do it.  The other models they advertise have fewer turns of larger diameter wire and will get more power, but require some gearing up (belt drive) to achieve 12V in reasonable low startup (7mph) wind speeds.

I am curious, how much does the alternator cog when trying to start it?  At what wind speed (approximately) does it start turning over?

Johnlm



Re: My generator (3.00 / 0) (#4)
by TheSuperFantasma (Feliperey74@hotmail.com) on Thu May 17th, 2007 at 08:08:57 AM MST
(User Info)

John,

You just killed all my hopes on this generator! I was hopping to power my entire home with this windmill.

: (     Just kidding!

Nando had already told me not spect much power out of this unit. I just hope to get enough power from it to have a light outside in my front yard. My wife will kill me if I do not get this thing to work.

Start at about 7 - 9mph.  

Thanks for your comments!

 
TheSuperFantasma
[ Parent ]



Re: My generator (3.00 / 0) (#5)
by johnlm on Thu May 17th, 2007 at 04:42:45 PM MST
(User Info)

Looks like you are well on your way to getting it all done.  If you pull it down one of these days, it would be nice to see a picture of the head / tail vane mounting assembly.  From what I can tell fron the long shots it looks intrestingly different than the standard approach used by most of the folks building dual rotor heads.

I used a modified auto alternator one summer to keep the battery on my camp trailer up in the mountains charged up.  I replaced it with a solar panel last summer for less worry in the times Im not up there.

John

[ Parent ]



My generator | 5 comments (5 topical, 0 editorial)
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