Breif introduction about myself

[Tyler883]

Hi

My name is Tyler( suprise! hehehe).

I've worked as an electronics technologist for the last 15 years, mostly hands-on and technical experience (very little time drinking coffie with the managers). My background is in manufacturing, then I moved into product developement where I provide the same hands-on and technical skills in a support role for a group of engineers.

I'm reseonably new at alternative energy discussions, but I have been a frequent reader for the last few years, and would like to add what I can these forums.

Things that I might entertain myself with( if someone wants to help out):

...is anyone interested in creating open source technology to compliment the 'keep it simple' projects like building a windmill out of a volvo hub.( Please dont take this the wrong way - I'm a techie not a magician of words - I fully understand that building a windmill out of a volvo hub is not that simple)

What do I mean about open source technology?for example:I would like to make sure that grid intertie technology is released to the public(free of charge) in a way that is very simple to construct, build, and use ..AND in a way that is very safe, because I would love to see people start implementing this technology with or without the mountain of redtape that our beloved power companies like to create for us.

It seems that all too often we are told to stay away from certain projects because of 'safety' or 'regulations'...effectively this keeps us little guys from making a move towards going off grid - I haven't got $2500 dollars to spend on a grid-tie inverter but I have the time, skills, and money to make one.....I beleive that there are alot of other people out there that feel the same way.

If you look at existing examples of open soutrce technology, some of them are extremely effective. For example, anyone with a computer and an interenet connection can buy a $50 dollar card, and get continual support and software updates that will allow them to 'test' satelite TV. I'm not suggesting that we go and do an illegal thing like this but we could definitely learn from the example and come up with a similar model for alternate energy.

Call me cynical, but if we start sharing microcontroller based technology, and back it up with freely shared programs and support, I'll bet that the industries that traditionally make a profit from us(and ruin the envirement in the process) will manage to make us illegal,too......but if this happens, I say we give them the bird, and keep going. This nation was founded on a fine tradition of stubborness, free thinking, and civil disobediance.

Regards

Tyler

BTW, just in case some would like to contact me, and you cant do it through this forum, please feel free to contact me a tseize@hotmail.com

[John II]

Welcome aboard Tyler: I like your thinking!

Diversity is what this forum is all about. The more knowledge on this board, the better off everyone will be.

John II

[sh123469]

Hi Tyler

Welcome to the board.  I like the way you think.

I bet there are many people who would grid intertie if the costs weren't so high.  ($ and red tape)

Now I know where to ask electronics questions too.    With my extremely limited electronics knowledge, hopefully I will be able to understand the answer.

It's going to be interesting reading some of your posts.

[LEXX]

Good to hear from ya, hope to see some of those 2500$ grid-tie inverter plans you speak of

LEXX

[hvirtane]

I like your thinking about 'open source'

renewable technology.

I've been a proponent

of similar ideas for years.

I think that 'open source' drawings for

500 W - 1 kW wind turbines within our reach

quite quickly.

One of my ideas is that we should

start experimenting to use

as the main bearing

pedal bearing systems from bicycles.

They are even more common than car wheels...

 I also wanted to experiment with

wooden bearings.

My first contribution for 'open source'

technologies is here:

http://www.cc.jyu.fi/~hvirtane/cooker/

- Hannu

[jacquesm]

Hi there Hannu !

The bearings from bicycles are very light, and can not be compared to the car hub bearings that people here mostly use. The reason for that is very simple, a car weighs a lot more than a bike. If you follow that through to its conclusion then that will probably something like that it will work but either not for very long or not with any appreciable size rotor on it. The forces generated in windmills are FAR stronger then what you would intuitively think they would be. Also there are these nasty storms that require very large reserves of strength. A very rough estimate of what a bicycle bearing based windmill would be capable of doing would be somehting like 50 Watts. Athletes can keep that up for a while so a bike should be able to cope with at least that much.

Windmills are preferrably constructed with reliability very high on the priority list.

Wind power increases as the cube of the wind speed, so a wind that is twice as fast has 8 times the available power.

Old (Dutch ones for sure and possibly Finnish) windmills/watermills used water cooled wooden bearings. The water served two purposes, to keep the wood from shrinking and to cool the friction point. Without that you'd be replaying boy scouts making fire in a hurry.

Not to rain on your parade, just a few observations.

[hvirtane]

The bearings from

bicycles are very light,

and can not be compared

to the car hub bearings

that people here mostly use.

The reason for that is very simple,

a car weighs a lot

more than a bike.

Yes I'm aware of that.

Basically I think that

a bicycle bearing can stand only

about 1 hp power.

Here the the thumb rule

among the old guys

who have build wind turbines,

is that the diameter of

the steel axle for the wind

rotor should be at least

1/100 of the diameter

of the wind rotor.

For example if your

blade diameter is 3 m,

the axle diameter

should be 3 cm.

In many bicycles

the center bearing is

just about that thick.

I've been involved myself

in a project of building

a wind turbine utilizing

a car wheel bearing.

Quite similar as the folks

on this board are doing.

Here is a picture of that one.

It is owned by Taisto Suihkonen,

The blade is 3 m in diameter.

The generator of the machine

is quite similar

to the original 'Volvo'

generator of the 'OP'

More details about the

'Reinikainen' style blade

design of this machine

are in my diary.

---

In my mind the idea to use

bicycle bearings is to use

it for a smaller machine.

Maybe also for a VAWT.

Wind power increases

as the cube of the wind speed,

so a wind that is twice

as fast has 8 times

the available power.

Yes. You are right.

You know very well.

Old (Dutch ones for sure

and possibly Finnish)

windmills/watermills used

water cooled wooden bearings.

The water served two purposes,

to keep the wood from shrinking

and to cool the friction point.

Without that you'd be replaying

boy scouts making fire in a hurry.

Yes, you know very well.

There has been such kind of

water cooled bearings.

There are also greased

wooden bearings.

Actually you can make very

strong wooden bearings

by 'cooking' them in engine oil.

You put the bearings using

a weight under the oil in

a kettle. Put a fire under.

Heat it so hot that the

water inside the wood starts

boiling and comes bubbling out.

When the bubbling stops

you stop the fire, but let

the thing be under the oil

the next 12 hours.

You put grease nipples

for the bearings, too.

It is even better

to use used engine oil

than new one.

These bearings don't need

any cooling water.

I can later (, when found the file)

upload here an instruction file

how we made this kind of bearings.

This kind of bearings have been

used in farm machinery in Finland  

and in some water pumping

windmills in Africa, too.

- Hannu

[jacquesm]

wow, oil impregnated wooden bearings. I'm seriously impressed, it makes me wonder how far you can stretch that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it can not be done, I just wonder if it is practical. A bicycle bearing is usually an open 'cage' style bearing with 6 or 8 balls (more in better bikes) that is made to do about 60 MAX.

Windmills will do many multiples of that, especially small ones.

In the end the proof of the pudding is in the eating, I'm very curious as to how it will work out.

If you want to go cheap and still get reasonable life there is another alternative: automotive spring bushings. They are dirt cheap and pretty strong (they'll hold a car up). You could easily fit them with a grease nipple and because they have plenty of surface they should live for a while. You'd still need a thrust bearing though.

Yet another cheap alternative is trailer axle bearing kits. A kit usually has two bearings (tapered roller bearings), a seal and some grease in it. They need to be tensioned just so to get good life out of them but assuming you do that properly they will live long.

I like your machine ! is it an illusion from the picture or are the blades wider at the tips ?

[hvirtane]

A bicycle bearing is usually an open 'cage' style bearing with 6 or 8 balls (more in better bikes) that is made to do about 60 MAX.

In many good bicycles the center bearing

is consisting of two coned rollers,

but you are right:

they normally do less than 100 RPM.

(The minimum they have to stand is 60 RPM,

because it is considered to be

the most efficient

speed for a human cyclist.)

But many VAWTs are designed to do no more.

Also I'm trying to develop such

HAWTs, which are rotating slowly.

They are much safer.

Besides that the best efficiency

I've seen with a HAWT is with a really slow rotating 12 blade turbine by Claus Nybroe ('Windflower').

I am in a complete agreement with you that

a car wheel bearing is much better.

But I'm trying to develop solutions for

such countries, where there aren't many

cheap wrecked cars available. (So-called 'developing countries'.)

is it an illusion from the picture

or are the blades wider at the tips ?

No illusion. They are wider on the tips.

The method how we made them

is available in my 'diary' here.

The reasons, why we made it like this:

1) It is very easy to make the blades

twisted by this method.

2) We are suspecting that they might be

more powerful especially on slow wind

speeds, if the blades are made wider

on the tips than on the roots.

It is based on the new

GGS theory (by Gorlov and others)

claiming that the fluid or the air

is moving towards

the tips of the rotor,

when the rotor is rotating.

3) We wanted the wind rotor to work

efficiently on really slow wind speeds.

- Hannu

[jacquesm]

Hi Hannu,

Cool ! I like your approach, cutting edge design combined with low tech materials. You really may be on to something there. You could easily become the Linus Torvalds of windpower. Right country too !!

I have seen one (really old) wooden windmill somewhere in Poland with blades like that, they were made out of fairly thin pieces of wood with cloth on them. The Portuguese have similar windmills running today with 'sail' like blades, also much wider at the tip than at the root (there is more space there !), but I doubt they have any advanced aerodynamics to them, more likely drag machines.

Do you have the calculations for your blades and the theory behind them available ? I'd really like to study that. I'm trying to educate myself on blade design right now, and even though there are plenty of formulas available (and some of the deriviations behind them) a lot of it seems to be geared towards getting maximum lift, not maximum power in windturbine applications. Possibly they are the same, but for now I fail to see the link. From what I have understood so far the inner two thirds of the rotor is the part that 'gets you going', but the outer third is where - at decent windspeeds - the power is made.

I think I'm beginning to see where you are going with this, a very slow running main rotor, possibly even a drag machine, coupled to gearing readily available and cheap to maintain hooked into a fairly high RPM low power alternator. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

btw did you see that Pakistani Savonius in one of the other threads ? Amazing machine...

How does your machine deal with high winds ?

Are you doing your research professionally or as a hobby ?

best regards,

 Jacques.

[hvirtane]

... become the Linus Torvalds of windpower.

Hehe. Actually I think that for 'the open source

movement' Linus' contribution isn't that big. It is RMS, who is the originator of the ideology. I've contacted him some times to ask about his opinion concerning making renewable energy technology somehow 'open source'. RMS is supporting our ideology, but he is telling that he himself cannot contribute much to help us, because he is so busy with computer software.  

Portuguese have similar windmills running today with 'sail' like blades, also much wider at the tip than at the root

Do you mean triangular sail wing rotors?

You got any pictures of them?

Do you have the calculations for your blades and the theory behind them available ? I'd really like to study that. I'm trying to educate myself on blade design right now, and even though there are plenty of formulas available (and some of the deriviations behind them) a lot of it seems to be geared towards getting maximum lift, not maximum power in windturbine applications.

I've got three friends starting to experiment

with this kind of blades, but unfortunately

I've got no calculations concerning the power.

I think that the best knowledge is now available from my friend in Australia. He has built similar blades at Fiji. I will aks from him, if he could send us some knowledge concerning his measurements.  

My main theoretical inspiration is coming from the mentioned article by Gorlov and others.

http://mystic.math.neu.edu/gorban/Gorlov2001.pdf

****************

At present I'm thinking that it is best to put

K2 airfoil profile on the tips of the blades.

****************

I will send here some drawings and pictures soon concerning that construction. I've started to build a prototype of that kind of blades with a friend living quite near to me. A rather big one, 10 m diameter. We are rebuilding an old wind turbine making new blades for it.

Another friend of mine in Finland is planning

to make a small prototype with similar blades. Maybe 5 m diameter wind rotor.

I am not trying to make a drag machine,

but trying to use airfoils a bit unconventional ways. I'm trying to use direct drive generators,

but for that big 10 m machine it seems to be another project amybe later, first we will use the generator, which was originally installed with the turbine with its gearbox.

I really like that Pakistan vertical axis

wind machine. My good friend from Denmark, John Furze has given to me some pictures of

that machine earlier. Basically I'm still at present more interested in vertical than horizontal axis wind turbines, but at present I'm involved with quite busy project with these horizontal axis developments.

- Hannu

[jacquesm]

yes, but RMS is so abrasive & jealous, and Linus is so... well, Finnish... (Laid back, easygoing).

I'm more interested in VAT's as well, but it seems the problems are pretty big. Vibration has so far killed almost all VAT projects except for the "Turby" (link here, mostly in dutch but some pics).

I visited Cap Chat here in Canada, there is a 100 M high one there (broken).

For practical reasons I'm making a HAT right now, it seems to be the easiest way to get going.

I'll read that pdf and see if I can make soup of it.

And I will search for my pictures of the Portuguese mills, yes, they were triangular sails.

10 M machine eh ? I'm jealous

j.

[hvirtane]

Hello,

as told I'll put here some

pictures of the blades,

which are now making with

Erkki Nousiainen.

I hope to be able to start making

another diary of that process

during the weekend, but

just now I'm busy with some

other things, too.

I just wanted to keep you informed

quickly about

the basics of the project.

Here is my drawing, how you

can easily cut air foil

profiles on the tips

of the blades if using

seven straight boards.

In fact I've copied for

Erkki pictures of

K2 profiles as found in the Net.

This drawing of mine here was

an early one to show to Erkki,

what kind of idea I've got in my mind.

And this is a picture of 'the original

Reinikainen wind turbine'. With my

friends we got a lot of inspiration

from this one.

It was made by a man called

'Reinikainen'. The diameter of

the blades is 6,5 m.

It has been working more than

ten years now. The generator

is a Swiss made permanent

magnet generator with a

high gearing gearbox.

The highest power seen

coming out during a storm

was more than 20 kW (1).

That is in my opinion a proof

that these kind of blades

can work efficiently

even with high wind speeds.  

In this 'Reinikainen' ´

machine there is no

wind tunnel tested airfoils

on the blades.

And next two pictures a week ago in the

workshop of Erkki. I hope to be able

to visit him during the weekend

to see, if the blades are already

ready...

We are making it two bladed

as that old turbine has been originally.

The diameter of the blades is 10 m.

That turbine had originally also

a pitch control mechanism,

but Erkki is going to fix

the new blades without using

that system. I will later send

also pictures of the method

how we will fix the blades.

As you can see in these pictures

here Erkki has just started the work

cutting the blades.

We later made exact paper copies

of K2 airfoils using a computer

printer to scale.

An original small paper copy of

a K2 airfoil is on the top of the blade

construction in the first picture.

- Hannu

[jacquesm]

very nice, thanks, that is something I may want to try here too ! (but first I'll go the boring, tried and true path, because I simply need more power than what I have today).

Some questions:

What kind of tip-to-tower distance to you have ?

How much do the blades flex in high winds ?

What kind of furling mechanism does that machine use ?

What kind of RPM are you achieving in what kind of windspeed ? (a tricky way of asking what your TSR is) on the 'Reinikainen' machine ?

What do you cover your blades with, and how do you stop them from delaminating ?

Do you have a powercurve ? If so can I see it ?


Sorry for asking so many questions, but I want to learn as much as possible about this subject, and your windmill seems to be 'one of a kind', I have never seen anything like it, and I think it is a very interesting alternative to what I normally come across.

[hvirtane]

# Some questions: What kind of tip-to-tower distance do you have?

'The original' six blade machine

in the picture has got really rigid blades

and does have quite big tip-to-tower distance.

I might get that knowledge

from Kyösti Juvonen,

who is taking care of that machine.

(There was a small mistake above,

The wind rotor is 7,5 m diameter, not 6,5 m)

The one we built with Taisto Suihkonen

has got the blade a bit tilted

and about 60 cm

distance.

That blade is also very rigid.

The new one with Erkki Nousiainen

(10 m diameter) is going to be

fixed on a downwind turbine,

where if the blade happens

to become a bit flexible,

it cannot hit the tower.    

# How much do the blades

flex in high winds ?

With six blade and the four blade

the blades flex really little.

We will see, how it will go

with the new big one.

# What kind of furling mechanism

does that machine use ?

The six blade has got

no furling mechanism.

The generator there

is a bit oversized

and there is an electric

control mechanism

to add more load,

the more power there

is available.

The machine has been

in use more than

ten years and survived some storms,

so that one has been

successful without any

furling systems.

The four blade machine with

Taisto Suihkonen has

got a similar furling system

as used by Hugh Piggott

and with the later 'OP' projects.  

The new project (10 m) is going to

be installed on an old wind turbine

with a pitch control mechanism,

which might not to be used at this time...

But we will see, we can use the

pitch control mechanism also,

if it will seem to be desirable.

# What kind of RPM are you

achieving in what kind of windspeed ?

(a tricky way of asking what your TSR is)

on the 'Reinikainen' machine ?

I will ask Kyösti Juvonen,

who is taking care of the 6 blade machine.

He might know about that.

With Taisto's machine it has

never been measured, yet.

I'm hoping that we'll achieve

with the new one TSR 4-5.

# What do you cover your blades with,

and how do you stop them from delaminating ?

With Taisto's machine

the blades were soaked

with linseed oil as much as the wood

would take in. On the top

there is an oil paint coating.

On the tips there is fiberglass

resin also.

With the six blade machine there

is a paint coating and

fiber glass resin on the tips.

With the new 10 m diameter

project it depends on Erkki.

He told that he might first

test them without any coating

and might use tar with them,

when got them running well.

He has got long experiences

working with wooden projects.

His first wind pump was built

in the beginning of 1950's...

He knows about many traditional

wood protection methods.

We will see, what he will do for it.

# Do you have a powercurve ?

If so can I see it ?

It might be available

from Kyösti for the six blade machine.

I will ask from him.

With Taisto's machine it has never

been measured, yet.

- Hannu