Windy week in Ontario

[Devo]

It's been a real windy week in southern ontario.

My 8 mag dual rotor burried the 20amp amp meter in a gust just before the 3/8's bolts

holding the stator bent allowing the magnets to smash the stator & wreck all 6 coils .

I took the prop (an 8 foot carved from hughs book) & mounted it to the 90 volt ,1/2 horse PM DC motor windmill I had last year , it is geared 2 - 1 & does not furl.

Yesterday it hit 28 amps with 4 marine batteries & an 8D commercial at 16 volts.

Not to bad , I almost bought the Canadian tire mill for $799 to try it out.

I have $120 invested in the "home made" one & it hit 400 watts yesterday.

It's been a costly week though , my first dual rotor is pretty much back to sqaure one & one set of 7 foot blades broke when a friend dropped a windmill off the garage-lol ( he almost went with it)

I got a weather set from home hardware.Now I just have to get it up to gauge the wind speed.

Enjoying the wind in Ontario -woohoo

Devo

[kenputer]

 I think we got some of your wind here in nova scotia this morning. I have one of Jerrys garbogens up with a 6'6" wood blade on it and when I look out this morning i thought the blade was gone but was just the wind turning it invisable,never saw a blade turn like that before. I noticed some movement in my tower,streched guy wires so I shut it down to be safe. Also not far from me a fellow has a 60' 3 legged tube tower up which he just changed from a hornet gennie to a H80,well about 20' down from the top it buckled and landed on the roof of is house, didn't look like much damage to his home but I don't know about his new gennie though. I say the tower is done, bend in 2-3 places.

 

[richhagen]

That is a new failure for me, I havn't heard that one before.  I don't have a failure like that on my list.  Just out of curiosity, how may 3/8 inch bolts did you have in the stator?  Are you sure that something didn't happen to hit the stator, knocking it out of wack and causing the bolts to bend.  It seems to me, that the only major forces acting on those bolts would be from the interaction of the alternator and the coils, and from the wind hitting on the stator directly.  Those forces shouldn't be that great.  Since your mill wasn't up that long, fatigue should not be an issue in your case I don't think.  Check that the threaded rod on the magnet rotors did not come loose and allow the front rotor to strike the stator.  Especialy in strong wind with yaw forces on the blades.  What diameter was your machine?  Make sure you use lock washers on all bolt/threaded rod connections.  Rich Hagen

[richhagen]

I'm sorry, you said it was an 8 footer in your post.  Rich

[Cinosh07]

Hello,

I've got the same wind here to in Quebec and i have seen the ammeter tap the 45 amp at 24v regularly. I've discover that my dump load i use was not enough. The Battery was starting to boil even with all the 3 power resistor on by the shunt regulator and all of my utility and lights on. The forecast for the next 3 days seems to be like last week to.

[elvin1949]

use lock tight to

later

elvin

[Devo]

Richhagen , it could very well be the rotor tapped the stator & that started the failure.

The stator is messed up pretty bad so you are probably right.

If I started again I would not go under 9 inches for the rotor so the centre hub can be built up a bit more but I will rebuild it for know & then move on to hughs 10 foot diameter machine.

Lots of wind lately , makes it all worth while.

Devo