An age ago, when I first started my project, the good Mr Flux said that I would need some line resistance with my set-up. I think that the magnets were a bit powerful for the amount of blade I intended to carry.
It's taken me a long time to understand the implications of what he said, and even longer to get around to doing something about it. I have mentioned in the past that I might be better getting some 'not so good' cable from the mill to the shed (around 75 feet) and doing it that way, but in the end I started to mess around with a bit of resistance at the battery.
I had no idea what sort of order to use, so my resistors to start with were lengths of nichrome wire made into coils. These can get a little warm at times and that's not good for the nerves, and after finding that around 2 ohms worked quite nicely, and made one from what I had left after building the dump load. I don't have a picture yet, but it's similar to this...
but only has 4 coils of around 9 ohms each. This gives me a nice big wattage resistor of 2.3 ohms.
I notice a difference straight away. Before, my mill was only charging in the gusts, now it stays spinning at speed for longer and the charge at the battery is much smoother. I realise that I'm loosing energy to the resitor, but I think I make up for that by having the mill in the working region for more of the time.
As I said, I had no idea of what value my line resistance should take, was I on the right lines here?
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