Getting off keester.

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

Up to this point I've spent a lot of time studying wind power.  But my only actual expenditures have been:

 - During the Nevada house construction:  Putting in the mains transfer cutoff switch that the utility company assured me (back in '99) was mandatory for RE systems, and a hunk of conduit from there to the garage.

 - Getting one of the Thermor wireless weather stations to do some wind measurements at the site.  (Though that hasn't happened yet...)

 - Buying a transformer, some wire, and some lamps at Radio Shack (to run some tests about N-in-hand winding with unequal wire sizes, per a discussion on the board).

This week I actually spent a few bucks on tooling specifically for building a mill:  I dropped a bit over $40 on a drill-press adapter for my line-powered dremmel.  (Originally intended to do that for the pistol-grip electric drill but Ace had the dremmel adapter and none for the drill.  Dremmel is probably better for part of this anyhow, though I'll pick up a drill adapter too when I find one.)

For an old Scotsman like me that's commitment.  B-)

= = = = =

What I'm planning to start with is a motor conversion, using the "on the cheap" no-lathe hack we came up with in discussions a couple months ago:

 - Drilling holes for cylindrical magnets (with a flat-front tool),

 - Drilling out clearance around them (down to a small retention ridge) to avoid shorting their field,

 - Cutting/grinding away the rest of the rotor's original pole pieces where the magnets are sited (again to avoid field shorting), but

 - Only converting one sense of the poles, say N, using thick magnets and leaving the original laminate poles and squirrel cage casting for the S poles and to stabilize the structure.

I decided on a motor conversion rather than an axial flux machine for the first try because the site is near a mountain pass on a high desert.  This means very high winds during storms and a strong daily wind for a couple hours every afternoon.  So I expect an hour or more of very high output to be a regular event.  A motor conversion, with its good cooling characteristics (and reactive limit) seemed to be a better match to the problem than an axial-flux machine with its burnout issues.

Now to find a decent motor.

I'm thinking 3 to 5 horse.  Yes, I know that's starting big.  But I want strong bearings and plenty of overcurrent capacity.  (I'll probably start with blades appropriate for a smaller machine.  But it would be nice to build an alternator I don't have to replace if/when I upsize.)

Site has a great spot a hundred feet or so away that could hold a 50 foot tower with a 20 foot mill on it (not that I'd build the blades that big on pass one).  50 foot tower is about right, since it's just down-and-cross wind of the house which goes up about 19 feet from ground level.  That should get it above the house turbulence.  (House is the only upwind obstruction higher than waist-high sagebrush for several miles.)

Distances are such that the mill can fall and miss everything by a comfy margin.  House seems a bit close for thrown blades.  But wind directions are such that the house should virtually never be in the plane of the turbine, so even if it manages to throw a blade for the extra distance it should still miss everything.  (Wind would have to be from about 15 degrees north of due west or south of due east to be an issue, and the pass is to the south-west.)  Still, I think I'll add a safety cable near the hub, just in case, and keep it things strong at the hub.

[fungus]

Pretty good. Certainly starting off bigger than me . What are you expecting to power with it? Didnt know you were a scotsman like me...

[JW]

Hi ULR,

 I, personally would love to build one of the dual rotor machines. Un-fortunitly I live in a townhouse and its just not possible. BUT, I have high hopes for a battery bank and an 3000 watt invertor. I live in a hurricane prone area. So about 5 days(24hr) out of the year the power goes out. This past year the power never went out.. But its no problem for me to use the grid for charging the batt bank, for my needs. I had a dream last night about running my re-fridgerator on a small 2 cycle 1100 watt gen, and the rest off of the invertor.

I say have fun where you can, keep us updated...

JW

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

What are you expecting to power with it?

I have a summer/retirement house just over the line from CA to NV.  North end of Antelope Valley near Monitor Pass and Lake Topaz.  High desert (5,000 ft).  Lots of sun, lots of wind, lots of view.

Lots of cold, too, though the house is super-insulated and has BIG south-facing windows, so the main problem, even in the winter, is cooling during the day.  (Not quite well insulated enough to avoid needing heating on winter nights, but some thermal mass, and fixing the door weather stripping, might change that.)

Power is flakey there so it's going to need backup anyhow, by the time we move to it full-time.  (In only a dozen or so visits, total time maybe two months, we've had two multi-day outages while there, and a bunch of shorter failures while away that reset the clocks on the ovens, usually without melting the ice cream.)

If I do the backup with oversize batteries and a good grid-tie inverter, adding wind- and/or solar-charging turns it self-sufficient, for only the price of the charging equipment plus the premium on the inverter/batteries versus a line-powered backup system.

I'd intended to do RE initially.  But the contractor got ahead of me and had the juice hooked up - which meant I owed the power company something over five grand to buy in on the next-door neighbor's transformer/poles/line instalation costs.  So there went the money earmarked for an RE system.

Didnt know you were a scotsman like me...

Well, I THINK I am - partly at least.  Family's been here since before the revolution so it's hard to trace 'em all.

But in this case I was referring to how I was living up to the reputation of people with names like ours for penney-pinching.  B-)

(Now I'm sorry that I signed up for the board with an alias I use elsewhere and thus, as a matter of policy, don't want to publish an online tie to my True Name.  B-(  Not that it's something I want to keep secret from you guys.  But FTF, not online.)

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

Didnt know you were a scotsman like me...

Well, I THINK I am - partly at least.  Family's been here since before the revolution so it's hard to trace 'em all.

Was just looking up one candidate for the name-importing ancestor and found more of his history is available online now:  He was "Ulster Scott", i.e. Scotch-Irish (Irish of Scotish descent from the plantation era).

I presume that still counts.  B-)

[TomW]

UGL;

(Now I'm sorry that I signed up for the board with an alias I use elsewhere and thus, as a matter of policy, don't want to publish an online tie to my True Name.

Not everyone knows this but I can change your user name pretty easy. I did it for another user who decided the board name was not really what he wanted.

If you want to do that I will gladly do it.

Just confirm you want me to and I will contact you at your signup email. Hehe I don't publish a lot of personal contact info online either.

Cheers.

TomW

[ghurd]

My 'real name' (here) has caused me a LOT less grief than I expected.

My semi-published yahoo email gets about 1~2 spams every day or 2, same as before.

I get very few uninvited real emails, and they are relevant and usually quite good.

I do get a couple telemarketers a week using references from online, but I do not believe it is from anything shown here. The number is on 'the do not call list'.

(The phone is still in my wife's maiden name, no idea how they made the connection between us)

The worst I had happen so far was a kid at Trick-or-Treat saying "Hey! You are the windmill Guy!"

G-

[JW]

For the longest time I thought ULR, was a female. But this just shatters my conceptions....

I dont know what to think now.

Grinns  

By the way that slogan/

- I reject your reality and subsitute my own-

/comes from that show MYTHBUSTERS on discovery channel. Figured that out coupla weeks ago.

JW

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

The handle was to provide anonymity on another board (slashdot) where I post heavily and often contentiously.  There are a number of reasons it's convenient to keep my True Name closely held there.  (For starters, I'm apparently sufficiently notorious - or one of my sig lines was - that one of the operators mentioned me in a talk about the board.  B-)  )  Knowlege of who I am might bias perceptions of the ideas I talk about, so I take advantage of the "On the internet nobody knows you're a dog." effect.

Unfortunately, I also reused the handle here - and confirmed online that I'm the same person.  So posting my True Name here makes it available there.

I could start over with a new handle here.  But handles carry reputation, and I like to think I've built a good one so far - on both boards.  B-)  Good enough to want to hang on to it, and continue discussions started under it, anyhow.  (Not to mention that my posting style is sufficiently distinct that people would quickly figure out who's who if I started a new handle.)

So I'll decline with thanks Tom's generous offer to change my handle, at least for now.

The handle refers to a request by an employer, back in the early days of Netnews.  The company was dedicated to free flow of information - part of its business model AND ideology, actually - but had a reputation for flakeyness.  So he said that people should go ahead and post, but ask them to try to avoid being a "lightning rod" for criticism that might reflect on the company.

My solution to the issue was to do postings that might be an issue using an alias.  This was pre-ISP and the company offered guest accounts to tech-savvy people unconnected with it otherwise - as part of its free-info mission - so there was no way to know which handles were employees and which were dingbats who had guest accounts.  B-)

= = = =

While I don't mind you folks knowing who I am, and will be happy to discuss things more face-to-face, the rule is to not have anything online that ties the two identities, and to neither confirm nor deny speculation.

Meanwhile, if anybody wants to meet and/or is planning a trip taking them past Lake Topaz NV and wants to see the (no RE stuff installe yet) site, leave a note in one of my diary postings and we can figure out a way to get in contact.  I've got internet there (slow dialup so far) and do check the board when onsite.

[JW]

Interesting.

Carry on then.

Keep us posted on your progress with the motor conversion genny for the wind turbine.

JW

[SparWeb]

ULR,

I look forward to hearing about your motor-conversion when you start.  I think I can help suggest what to look for in a motor, having done one now.

The bit about 3-phases must be obvious, and I'll also assume you know about the wiring change for multiple voltages available on many.  If you want the "best", choose the motor with the lowest range of voltages.

For example, if you have a motor that can run on 575V, then the wiring will be designed for a corresponding current.  If another motor with equal power rating is wired to run on 230V, then the current it draws is higher.  The upshot of this is the gauge of wire inside the stator is heavier, allowing you to pull more current out.  The phase resistance will be lower.  Check the data plate for the connection schematic & options.

On the other hand, if it's a choice between a 3HP and a 5HP with the same voltage ranges, or voltage ranges that favour the 3HP, go for the 5HP anyway.  You can juggle connections (star/delta, series/parallel) as necessary for the right output power range.  The more wires you have in the connection box to start with, the more options you have.  6 wires are a minimum, 9 wires better, 12 wires are excellent!  You don't have to invest in a full-blown star-delta sensing and switching system, but when you first set it up, you can experiment with different connections and compare power curves.

My 3HP motor conversion looks like it will work with a set of 10 ft blades.  I won't have that part finished until next year.  I have a smaller genny on the workbench now and am trying to stay focused on that.

Try looking around shops that use lots of compressed air.  If you're willing to take away the compressor, you can get the motor from that.  I was lucky: in my case, they wanted to keep the tank, the compressor was already in the trash, and the motor was sitting unused!

Good luck!