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Questions about cut in.


By TheCasualTraveler, Section Newbies
Posted on Sun Feb 10th, 2008 at 03:34:31 PM MST
Pretty much just questions about cut in.

     I want to make more changes to my turbine. I just bench tested it and found it has a cut in at approx. 120 RPM +/-  I think this is probably close to optimum for the low winds in my area. It charges a little bit into 12 V batteries, and often, as opposed to a little more, into 24 Volts but not so often at the higher cut in and over all I think I am ahead with slow and steady. I do however want to tweak it for more power and want to try dual rotor but I think that would increase the voltage per RPM and cause it to cut in at a lower speed, possibly stalling the blades which are 64" pvc.

QUESTION - Am I correct in thinking that adding a second rotor would lower cut in?

I don't think you need the other specs for that but they are 12 pole, 8" rotor, 9 coils, 120 turns #22 wired star.

Next Question,

     If you had 2 turbines, ALL things identical except for the gauge of the wire in the coils (disregarding the physical restraints of coil size and larger wire) would the turbine with the larger wire have a differant cut in speed? I believe I am correct in saying they would both produce the same OPEN voltage at the same RPM but I wonder, once a load is applied, would the turbine with larger wire and the potential of more current need more wind power to reach cut in? Could it be that cut in would be the same RPM but you would need more wind for the machine with larger wire to reach cut in at that RPM?

Thank you, I'll hang up and take the answer off the air...
     

Questions about cut in. | 12 comments (12 topical, 0 editorial)

Re: Questions about cut in. (3.00 / 0) (#1)
by finnsawyer on Sun Feb 10th, 2008 at 08:53:49 AM MST
(User Info)

Cut-in is determined by voltage, not current, specifically when the voltage is such that the diodes start conducting a significant amount of current into a battery.  That is, cut-in should be defined as the RPM for which a set amount of current or some set fraction of the maximum current is flowing into a standard (12.6 volt?) battery.  Since it is not, the term is rather vague and open for interpretation.

Going to a second rotor should increase the magnetic flux and as a result of that the voltage at a given RPM.  So cut-in would be lowered.  But this could stall your blades requiring a new set of longer blades to match the new power requirements.  I think you should try to determine what percentage of the power available from the wind you are currently getting.  Remember, a 7.5 mph wind has 1/8 the power available of a 15 mph wind.  There just isn't much power available from the low velocity winds.  
GeoM



Re: Questions about cut in. (3.00 / 0) (#2)
by stephent on Sun Feb 10th, 2008 at 09:13:05 AM MST
(User Info)

A second rotor might also put the genny right where it could be useful with the 24 volt configuration with the blades you have...
Might try it.



Re: Questions about cut in. (3.00 / 0) (#3)
by Flux on Sun Feb 10th, 2008 at 09:18:04 AM MST
(User Info)

You don't give any details of magnets, but I get the impression that your stator is a bit slow for 12v and a bit fast for 24v. You may have a stall issue but I am more inclined to think that you have very little wind.

I am inclined to think that going to dual rotor is not going to get you any increase in power and it will certainly give you stall issues at 12v.

You may get some advantage using dual rotor on the same stator at 24v, there again I have no idea if you are near stall.

At the present moment before you do anything else I suggest you increase the distance from the magnet rotor to the stator and try again at 12v. If it is lack of wind I doubt you will see any difference. If you are running near stall you may see some improvement.

I really think your way forward is to go dual rotor with a larger prop but if you are insistent on using pvc you are on the verge of more trouble.

Flux



Re: Questions about cut in. (3.00 / 0) (#4)
by TheCasualTraveler (a.miklos@yahoo.com) on Sun Feb 10th, 2008 at 10:39:49 AM MST
(User Info) http://thecasualtraveler.com/wind.htm

     Sorry, the magnets are Ed's neo wedge magnets, 1/4 inch thick and a little over 2 sq. inch surface.

     You are right Flux, we have a small amount of wind here, however on the positive side it is somewhat constant. Since I put the mill up at the beginning of the year I have yet to see a day that it did not make any power, albeit small. I am trying my best to eek some power out of light winds. As I said, I recently bench tested the alternator and made a graph of the output. As you might expect the power curve was best starting at 300 rpm's and up. Since I will not see that often I am going for the part of the curve from 150 rpm's to 300. Not ideal, but it is realistically what I have to work with. As is, my machine is putting out 3 to 10 watts average. I hope that by narrowing in on what is available to me I can build an alternator that will put out 50 to 100 watts in the winds I have.

     I still have many options open to get there, stronger magnets, larger rotor, thicker wire, dual rotor, 6 foot diameter wood blades, better hardware and bearings and mounted 13 ft higher and in clearer air than where it is now. Of course all these variables center around the fact that 6' is as large as I want to make the blades.

     I already did what you suggested Flux, I incresed the distance between magnet and rotor, also tried 24 volt as well as adding resistance. The results were that I need more wind than what I normally have for a higher cut in. I believe as you said my stator is a bit slow for 12v and a bit fast for 24v.

     I'm still very curious about my second question. If I read Finsawyer's answer correctly it would appear that given two identical windmills the one with larger wire will cut in the same as the other one at the same windspeed, the only differance is the larger wire windmill would make more power than the other one, given the same windpeed. Seems like getting something for nothing to me. Is this correct?
Andy



Re: Questions about cut in. (3.00 / 0) (#5)
by Flux on Sun Feb 10th, 2008 at 11:19:04 AM MST
(User Info)

I think you will be hard pushed to raise the power out from 10W to 100 or even 50.

I doubt very much that you have stall problems so low in the wind speed especially with those thin magnets. With that size prop then you may hit stall with a dual rotor.

The bit about wire size is very confusing, I will try to explain but it is still complicated.

The voltage ( number of turns ) does determine cut in speed and the wire size will make no difference.  Now the thin wire will have high resistance and the thick one will have low resistance.

The alternator with thin wire will need to turn faster at any other speed than cut in to produce the same current. Perhaps you can imagine the high resistance one needing to run at twice cut in speed to produce 10A, the low resistance one may reach 10A at only 10% above cut in.

For the alternator alone this is simple and straightforward, the low resistance winding will be far better and will produce much more power with less internal heating.

Now the really tricky bit, the power produced by the prop increases with the cube of the wind speed as long as it runs at the optimum tsr. For this to happen the rotational speed should directly follow wind speed. If it doesn't you will fall off the peak of the prop's power curve.

To maintain ideal tsr say you cut in at 7 mph, you should rum at 3 times cut in speed at 21 mph. This is a big increase in speed and would be the sort of thing you would expect for the high resistance and inefficient alternator. Your prop keeps high efficiency but alternator efficiency falls very rapidly with wind speed.

Now look at the efficient alternator and it wants to run at nearly constant speed ( 10%  increase above cut in say) that alternator is very efficient but you push the prop so far off its peak of the power curve that you don't have enough power available to drive the alternator to the speed required to see its benefit.

There has to be a compromise, you aim to let the prop speed up enough to hold reasonably well on its power curve yet you must get a sufficient current increase from the alternator to match the power available from the prop.

A good compromise seems to be to let the prop speed double with 3 times increase in wind speed. This means that your power rises less than wind speed squared ( not cubed) and the alternator efficiency drops to about 50% at three times cut in speed.

In your case I doubt very much that you are seeing wind speeds anywhere near 20 mph so you will not see a great deal of difference whatever you do to the alternator. If you have got the best cut in then there is not going to be a lot left to chase.

As a very rough guide the best you are likely to do is about 40W at 10 mph for a decent 6ft prop. I am not sure that you can even get that with a simple pvc one.

The fact that you have tried 12 and 24v and tried series resistance and moving the magnet rotor suggests that you are managing just about all you can get from that diameter and type of prop in your wind speed.

Flux

[ Parent ]



Re: Questions about cut in. (3.00 / 0) (#6)
by finnsawyer on Sun Feb 10th, 2008 at 11:20:22 AM MST
(User Info)

I might have known that since you violated the geometry in asking the question that you would get into trouble with the answer.  Think of it this way.  The smaller wire has a coating so that it takes up the same space and has the same number of turns.  Then both alternators would have the same voltage at the same RPM.  But the one with the larger wire has less resistance, so you could get more current and power if the mill can provide it.  But in reality you have not gotten something for nothing, as by using the thinner wire in the other case you gave up potential power.  That is, it was a poor design.
GeoM
[ Parent ]


Re: Questions about cut in. (3.00 / 0) (#7)
by TheCasualTraveler (a.miklos@yahoo.com) on Sun Feb 10th, 2008 at 11:38:26 AM MST
(User Info) http://thecasualtraveler.com/wind.htm

     I think I get it. The extra power I get from the larger wire does not come from nothing but instead it is (at least in part) the power that was lost to resistance (heat) with the smaller wire. By using the larger wire which has less obstruction to the flow of current the power simply becomes useful instead of being lost to heat. Is that right?
Andy
[ Parent ]


Re: Questions about cut in. (3.00 / 0) (#8)
by Flux on Sun Feb 10th, 2008 at 11:56:46 AM MST
(User Info)

Yes if you take it to extremes the high resistance winding produces most of the power available as heat in the winding. The low resistance one is capable of supplying the power to the load.

When you avoid the extremes you have a tricky region where you are balancing alternator efficiency against power available ( prop efficiency).

Over a very limited range of wind speed as possibly in your case you will see more benefit from the low resistance winding, the effects of serious stall don't really take place until you reach about 50% over cut in wind speed. Very different when your range of wind speed can go to over 3 times cut in wind speed.

The fact that you don't see a spectacular improvement at 24v almost certainly indicates wind speed as the limitation rather than alternator resistance.

Flux

[ Parent ]



Re: Questions about cut in. (3.00 / 0) (#9)
by TheCasualTraveler (a.miklos@yahoo.com) on Sun Feb 10th, 2008 at 12:15:53 PM MST
(User Info) http://thecasualtraveler.com/wind.htm

     I think one problem is my understanding of "Stall" The otherpower wind terms page doesn't define stall and I have been under the impression that stall is when your alt hits cut in speed but if there is not enough wind to push it past this point the rotor blades slow down taking it below cut in at which point the lessened load makes it speed up again, and it just sort of bounces on and off of cut it.

But you wrote, "the effects of serious stall don't really take place until you reach about 50% over cut in wind speed." and that seems much differant than what I was thinking.

     Also, I see in the Otherpower "Bottom Line" article there is a graph that shows the power an efficient alternator should be able to get from various size rotors in differant winds. At 8MPH it shows 25 watts for a 6' diameter rotor and at 12 MPH it shows 85 watts. If I can get 20 to 80 watts then I will be happy!
Andy
[ Parent ]



Re: Questions about cut in. (3.00 / 0) (#10)
by Flux on Sun Feb 10th, 2008 at 01:03:02 PM MST
(User Info)

Yes stall is a bit strange. If you hit cut in below the peak of the blades power curve then you just don't get away. Normally the trick is to get the blades out of stall before you reach cut in speed.

Just as an example, imagine a set of blades designed for tsr 6. If you aim to reach cut in with the blades running at tsr 6 or more you find the blades speed up rapidly to cut in. If the alternator is vastly too powerful the blades will not have the power to hold this tsr and the blade speed will hold constant and wind speed rising will mean a fall in tsr. This would result in operating at near constant speed and the tsr would fall constantly. There would be an increase of power as the tsr falls from above 6 down to perhaps tsr4. beyond this the power may remain fairly constant.

You would probably not see any speeding up and slowing down, it would sit at near constant speed.

In real life with any reasonable alternator efficiency you will never reach that level of stall if your cut in is at design tsr or above. Beyond cut in you should see a fairly steep rise of power but that will become less steep as you get down below ideal tsr.  How far you go beyond cut in wind speed before things levels off depends on the alternator efficiency. If the alternator is too inefficient to bring the tsr below 4 at any point the blade power will not level off and anair gap alternator will increase power until it burns out. Iron cored alternators can reach a constant power output condition due to reactance if conditions are right and the blades will run away while producing constant power (not to be confused with stall).

This graph shows the effect very well. It is for a 6ft prop with a powerful alternator.
Connected directly the thing stalls badly. With some resistance to reduce the alternator efficiency you see a fair improvement in power out even though the alternator is less efficient. This is normally the best compromise with direct loading.

The to curve shows what happens when you match the load to let the prop run at constant tsr without lowering the alternator efficiency. You then get best prop and alternator efficiency with no trade off between one and the other.

As you can see there is not a lot of difference in the lower winds but things change dramatically in high winds.





[ Parent ]



Re: Questions about cut in. (3.00 / 0) (#11)
by Flux on Sun Feb 10th, 2008 at 01:15:33 PM MST
(User Info)

Sorry wrong curves and posted twice, See if this works.



Those power levels are all you can expect at 6ft, you may not see that with pvc blades.

Flux

[ Parent ]



Re: Questions about cut in. (3.00 / 0) (#12)
by TheCasualTraveler (a.miklos@yahoo.com) on Sun Feb 10th, 2008 at 01:43:51 PM MST
(User Info) http://thecasualtraveler.com/wind.htm

     Thanks for reposting the chart, I was confused. One thing I note is that the low wind part of the chart has the least differance between the curves for stall and balanced. I think you mentioned that I may not even reach stall and now I see. Hopefully, since I am not expecting too much power, and I'll be working in this part of the chart, things might not be so critical.

     Well, thank you Mr Flux, Mr Finnsawyer and Mr Stephent. Understading about wires and magnets and coils was easy compared to this etheral talk of tip speeds and power curves. Just when I thought I was near the end of the maze it turns out there are more levels. I've got quite a bit of cyphering to do. Wait here, I'll be back...

ps. to help in my studies has anyone what they would call an exceptionally good design for a low wind windmill where I might compare parameters?
Andy



Questions about cut in. | 12 comments (12 topical, 0 editorial)
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