Manual furling

[SmoggyTurnip]

My pipe finally arived for my tower.  I will start construcion tomorow.

I was thinking about adding manual furling to my turbine.  I have seen that

the Bergy wind turbine has this.  One thing I don't understand is how they

keep the cable for furling from wraping around the wires from gennie.  Can anybody tell me?

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[Flux]

The Bergey has slip rings and the cable doesn't need to hang down the middle of the tower.

Flux

[SmoggyTurnip]

Thanks Flux,  I didn't realize Bergy used slip rings - so that answers that question.  But it also leads to the next obvious question.  Is there an easy way to implement manual furling when you don't use slip rings?

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[Flux]

No I have never found an easy way, but I still think it is worth the trouble.

I do my manual furling with sleeves sliding outside the pipes of the yaw head. Needs a bit of grease occasionally to keep things free.

I would prefer the furling cable to come down the middle but I have never been prepared to risk using the power cables as a furling cable. I am sure it would work ok but a hard fatigue life on the cables. I am sure you could run the furling cable down a plastic conduit with the power cables round the outside and attach the whole thing to rotate with the head from the top.

Flux

[BT Humble]

Have a look at a kid's "Freestyle" BMX bike.  They have a setup on the steering head to allow them to rotate it 360 degrees while using hand brakes (with cables).  It should be fairly simple to scale up the concept (and it's really quite a neat idea!)

It's apparently called a "rotor system", I can't find a diagram though.

BTH

[wdyasq]

Take a good look at the "American Water Pumping Windmill". Most of those furl UNLESS the cable is in tension. In this manor if the cable is severed the machine goes to the 'safe' position.

One could also put a fuesable link in such a cable. The fuesable link would add length to the cable so a new link could be put in and the safety reused. This way one could furl the mill from a reasonable distance. One should really experience the thrill of a 'runaway' mill to appreciate the feature of remote shutdown.

Ron

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

How about using a stiff, oversize, conduit AROUND the power cable - also protecting it somewhat from wind bending, sunlight, and such - as the furling pull?

Let it yaw with the head, in a guide near the bottom to keep it roughly centered, and counterweight it at the top to keep it from rubbing up and down on the cable as the mill auto-furls.

Grab it and yank, and hang a weight on it to keep it down, when you want to furl the mill.  (Or perhaps arrange it so you just take a weight OFF it to furl and put on ON it to unfurl.  But I prefer the postive yank to furl, since you can yank extra hard if the pivots/guides/whatever are a bit sticky.)

[Herder from Sweden]

The wire with coil goes down in the middle of the pole with the cables. And I probebly will have to untwist them from time to time.



Maybe i would put a small motor(viper motor?) on the yaw bearing if i do it again,and just run the cables down the middle insted of the wire whit coil.