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Beginner question about stall and such


By JW1111, Section Wind
Posted on Thu Jun 5th, 2008 at 12:25:50 AM MST
Beginner question about stall and such

Can you guys explain to me why 12 volt will cause stall more than 24 volt?  And how line loss will effect this?  I thought stall was a term relative to blade pitch. Is there a good resource for learning about these types of relationships involved in motor speed verses voltage, resistance, etc?  Some of this stuff is so far over my head I would like to be able to understand it better.  Thanks.
Beginner question about stall and such | 14 comments (14 topical, 0 editorial)

Re: Beginner question about stall and such (3.00 / 0) (#1)
by electronbaby (roy<at>windsine.org) on Wed Jun 4th, 2008 at 08:27:25 PM MST
(User Info) http://www.windsine.org

I was going to write a really drawn out response to this. At the risk of making it more complicated ... and confusing you more:

This is really a factor of understanding Ohms Law and the power curve of the alternator.

If all parts of two identical turbines were designed properly (12v and 24v), there should be minimal difference between the two at what RPM they stalled. The stalling usually takes place when you attempt to load the alternator before the prop gets up to an acceptable RPM. An easy way to avoid this is to make sure you wind the stator for cut in at a reasonable RPM. If you shoot too low, you will stall the prop and prevent the machine from working optimally in higher wind speeds. Sometimes this is acceptable because in most battery charging systems, the bank will be charged early on and some of the power from the higher winds can be wasted by allowing the machine to furl,...in other words, it makes for a slow, peaceful machine. This is not optimal for grid tie systems however. A compromise must be made, and in most cases, MPPT will help out big time by widening your operating "window".

With regard to the voltage difference and stall, this has to do with the resistance of the electrical circuit running up and down your tower. The circuit is comprised of the stator, the rectifier, and the feed line coming down the tower. The feed line and the stator must be thought of as one piece. If the resistance calculations done when building a stator, took the feed line resistance into account, I think it would be a little better understood. A 12v machine will have 2x the current as a 24v machine. This means that a larger feed line will need to be used to avoid line loss. If you use too large a feed line, you run the risk of stalling. Too small a feed line, and you run the risk of over speeding in high winds. It is important to have the right amount of "coupling" to have a workable system, and still attain stator longevity. I believe the latest trend is to use larger magnets than normal. This will allow you to have a tight coupled rotor/stator and tends to make the stator less prone to burn out from high winds because you can use less copper and keep your resistance lower (furling is still very important). The resistance is then added to the feed line to make up the difference.

Im sure Flux will chime in.
Again, if the 12v and the 24v machine were designed correctly, there would not be much difference.
Have Fun!! RoyR KB2UHF



Re: Beginner question about stall and such (3.00 / 0) (#2)
by kurt on Wed Jun 4th, 2008 at 08:39:53 PM MST
(User Info)

allot of times when someone builds an alternator for 12v with way to low of a cut in rpm making it so that the blades can never get into there power band and start to fly aka. stall it will be recommended that that person try there alternator at 24v because that will let the blades spin up to a much higher rpm before the drag of hitting cut in speed starts slowing them down thereby allowing the blades to hit there power band better and fly instead of stall. i think that is what you are asking about but not sure......  

http://www.reresource.org/

IRC


Re: Beginner question about stall and such (3.00 / 0) (#3)
by Flux on Thu Jun 5th, 2008 at 12:18:33 AM MST
(User Info)

I can't add much, the others have covered it.

All things being equal the 12v machine would be the least likely to stall as the line resistance has greater effect and so does the diode drop.

I suspect that many people pick up winding details for higher voltage machines and try to use them at 12v. There is a mistaken belief that using more turns gives better results and it doesn't and can really spoil the performance.

As you say, stall is related to blade speed and angle and the system voltage doesn't come into this directly.

The best you can hope for is to choose a cut in speed where the blades are rotating above the ideal speed but still near enough to give some results in the lightest wind.

The tsr falls very rapidly with load and you will soon come on to the peak of the power curve. As you load more you fall below optimum and if you get things right you should just be approaching stall at the time you need to furl to protect the alternator.

If you cut in too early you start on or below the peak of the blades curve and you run into stall within the working wind speed range. Once you hit stall badly the power remains virtually constant with increase speed.

Flux



Re: Beginner question about stall and such (3.00 / 0) (#4)
by wpowokal on Thu Jun 5th, 2008 at 02:47:01 AM MST
(User Info)

This artical on The Back Shed is quite informative, be prepared to read it several time to allow it to sink in.

http://www.thebackshed.com/windmill/articles/DonBrown1.asp

allan down under
A life lived in fear is a life half lived.



Re: Beginner question about stall and such (3.00 / 0) (#5)
by JW1111 on Thu Jun 5th, 2008 at 08:10:29 AM MST
(User Info)

That pretty much clears it up.  Sounds like it has to do with load on the machine too early in the rotation and the end result is resistance-induced rpm slowing and less overall power.  So the alternator is designed to start producing power at a higher rpm, where the machine is most efficient.   Line loss can be introduced as compensation, so that less current is getting to the load, therefor reducing stall until a higher rpm is acheived.  I can see where there would be several variables at play there that the designer must consider. I will check out the other article. Thanks alot.



Re: Beginner question about stall and such (3.00 / 0) (#6)
by CmeBREW (smke833f@hotmail.com) on Thu Jun 5th, 2008 at 02:23:12 PM MST
(User Info)

Those are all excellent answers!

Those certainly are the main causes of stall in windmills.  I don't mean to complicate this any more, but it seems to me that some , at times, also refer to the aeronautical aspect of the blades themselves "stalling" in low rpm rotation because the airfoil shape (curved backside)of the blades cannot get to the point of acheiving 'Lift', because of being 'held back' from picking up enough rpm from the reasons just described from everyone's answers.  

This might be really saying the same thing.  I am still learning myself on this, but is it possible, in a rare occurance, that stall could also be caused by the blades themselves, apart from the stator or line resistance??
Perhaps someone who knows could comment?

-Woof: You might consider putting this thread in the FAQ section for windmills in general because it is good??.



Re: Beginner question about stall and such (3.00 / 0) (#7)
by Flux on Fri Jun 6th, 2008 at 01:18:01 AM MST
(User Info)

Stall is exactly as you suggest, it is the aerodynamic failure to develop lift on an aerofoil with too large an angle of attack.

I had never thought anyone would consider it to be anything else. There is nothing in an alternator, line resistance or anything else that causes the phenomena.

The only reason why alternators and line resistance come into this is that they determine the blade input power and that decides the tip speed ratio of the blade. When the tip speed ratio falls well below the ideal the angle of attack becomes too great and the blade stalls.

All you are doing is trading electrical efficiency to keep the blade efficiency high enough to avoid serious stall. Unless you devise a loading that keeps the blade rotational speed in step with wind speed you are changing the tsr.

Flux

[ Parent ]



Re: Beginner question about stall and such (3.00 / 0) (#8)
by JW1111 on Fri Jun 6th, 2008 at 08:04:17 AM MST
(User Info)

 I had always thought that blade pitch creates turblulence at high rotation and that was the definition of stall.  But basically every response here started talking about current and voltage.  This paragraph suggests that load is directly the cause of stall:

"The tsr falls very rapidly with load and you will soon come on to the peak of the power curve. As you load more you fall below optimum and if you get things right you should just be approaching stall at the time you need to furl to protect the alternator."

I guess it is over my head and you probly dont begin to understand it completely until you get in to buiding motors. Thanks alot.

[ Parent ]



Re: Beginner question about stall and such (3.00 / 0) (#9)
by finnsawyer on Fri Jun 6th, 2008 at 08:45:45 AM MST
(User Info)

I've been debating whether to wade in on this.  My suggestion is to draw a couple of graphs.  Assume the alternator curve is linear (a straight line) and puts out zero watts  at 12 mph and 1,000 watts at 30 mph.  Let the wind turbine, on the other, obey the cubic law and also puts out 1,000 watts at 30 mph.  At 15 mph it puts out only 125 watts, the cubic behavior.  That's all it can do at each wind speed.  Overlay the two curves and it becomes obvious that for wind speeds above 14 mph the turbine will be severely stalled.  You can reduce the slope of the alternator by adding external resistance to reduce stall to have it occur at a greater wind speed, or not at all.  But you pay a price.  A proportion of the power generated is lost as heat in the external resistor.

Another way to reduce or eliminate the stall issue is to increase the air gap in the alternator.  In that case the slope remains the same and the entire alternator curve moves to the right.  In that case you could potentially eliminate stall, but you would probably like the alternator curve to just touch the turbine curve at the point of furling.  To my eye (I happen to have this case graphed) cut-in would then be at 15 mph and furling at 24 mph.  Maximum power looks to be about 500 watts.  You do, of course, lose all power generation for wind speeds below 15 mph.  So, you pay another kind of price.
GeoM
[ Parent ]



Re: Beginner question about stall and such (3.00 / 0) (#10)
by CmeBREW (smke833f@hotmail.com) on Fri Jun 6th, 2008 at 09:10:07 AM MST
(User Info)

"When the tip speed ratio falls well below the ideal the angle of attack becomes too great and the blade stalls."

I believe I understand everything exept this one statement which others have said in the past also.  But the blades are FIXED at ONE ANGLE (say 4 or 5 degrees at tip) to the hub, so how can the 'angle of attack' ever change!?  The blades don't twist.  I always figured it was related to SPEED of the blades moving thru the air in rotation the way the air either 'falls off' the back side of the blades or 'wraps' around the back side of the blades??.

Of course, with a variable pitch blade system (which almost nobody has here) , this would make perfect sense. It also makes perfect sense with airplane wings in flight.
But with fixed angle blades on windmills, this 'changing angle of attack' statement confuses me as it always has.   But I understand everything else.      



Re: Beginner question about stall and such (3.00 / 0) (#11)
by ghurd on Fri Jun 6th, 2008 at 09:54:07 AM MST
(User Info)

You are almost looking at it as unloaded blade.
Look at the other extreme. Dead shorted to 1 RPM.  It is still turning, so it must still be making a tiny bit of lift (maybe not- but you get the idea).  

A couple RPMs before cutin, the blades are running faster than the design TSR.
A little bit into stall, the blades are running slower than design TSR.

The say 5 degrees at the tip is fixed, but the angle of attack is related to the RPM of the blade.

It sounded better in my head,
G-

[ Parent ]



Re: Beginner question about stall and such (3.00 / 0) (#12)
by Flux on Fri Jun 6th, 2008 at 11:59:21 AM MST
(User Info)

You need to think of the apparent wind direction to understand this.

The blades don't see the wind as you see it, they see a vector of the real wind and the component due to the blades rotating typically 6 times wind speed at the tip.

That is why the things have extreme difficulty starting from standstill. The angle of attack from the wind alone is over 80 deg and stall starts about 12 deg.

As the blades pick up speed the apparent wind moves round to far nearer the blade flying direction and at the maximum power point the angle of attack will be about 4 deg. As you slow the prop the apparent wind comes more into the direction of the true wind and at about 12deg angle of attack you start to stall.

Try Hugh's site, http://www.scoraigwind.com/ He has diagrams showing the real wind, the apparent wind, the pitch angle and the angle of attack.

Flux

[ Parent ]



Re: Beginner question about stall and such (3.00 / 0) (#13)
by CmeBREW (smke833f@hotmail.com) on Fri Jun 6th, 2008 at 01:59:58 PM MST
(User Info)

Wow,, that certainly helps me out a LOT!  I have been looking for such information for quite some time.  Thanks for that link-- I did not know that was there at Hugh's site.

I hope new ones are not intimidated by certain things that sound difficult at first or take awhile to understand.
Because you don't HAVE to understand everything to begin getting some good results and having a lot of enjoyable and interesting fun with REnewable energy. Learn as you go.    
 



Re: Beginner question about stall and such (3.00 / 0) (#14)
by SparWeb (sparweb at ANTISPAM_hotmail_com) on Sat Jun 7th, 2008 at 05:00:15 PM MST
(User Info)

Something to keep in mind, when you want to know something about how the prop of a wind turbine works, is that it's not too different from an aeroplane propeller.  It just points in the opposite direction.  The thing about airplanes: people write about 1000 times more about airplanes than wind turbines.  Sources of information about aircraft propellers abound!

Just a few good links, among thousands, depending on your expertise:

See How It Flies

Centennial of Flight - Propellers

Free online Ground School
Steven Fahey
[ Parent ]



Beginner question about stall and such | 14 comments (14 topical, 0 editorial)
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