lost the wind genny today

[Birdmmjb]

The wind today has been very hard today.  After some very strong gusts I decided to tie the blades of the windmill.

I waited for a calm moment and turnd it out of the wind and tied the rotor down.  While doing this I noticed stress cracks in the blades half way up on all three blades.  I am not suprised as the blades looked likc a cone flower when the wind was really whipping.  I was seeing 18 watts from the mill for sustained times today.

So I'll be shopping for new blades and a better furlling system before letting the mill run again.

The wind also took one of the solar panels off the rack.  No harm done but I cant belive that its blowing this hard.

Dorthy, I think we may be in Kansas.

Jan from very windy Arkansas

[Warrior]

Some thing similar happened to me a few days ago. We were having gust at around 30 mph. I woke up that morning to see that somehow the bridge rectifier I had bolted to the frame of the windmill was gone so basically it was running unloaded; the tail had also fallen down but the machine was still tracking the wind.

All of a sudden a big gust came and the prop revved up amazingly fast, a fraction of a second later a loud bang!!! The blade with the lead ballast ripped itself from the hub and flew away; the machine, still turning heavily unbalanced started jumping and fell off the pole. It all happened right before my eyes!! It was pretty awesome!!

I didn't find the blade the flew off, but I did find the bridge rectifier.

I was lucky this was a small 5 foot machine and no one/myself got hurt.

Lesson learned: build it like a tank!!!

Warrior

[elvin1949]

Jan

 If i remember right you have metal [AL] blades.

I would carve a set of wood blades and not have

that problem again {wood can take the high winds}.

 I am glad it was not any worse.It could have came apart and ruined everything.

 I know what you mean about the wind.We had 35mph with gust above 50mph.I am south of you {same storm}

 later

Elvin

[Birdmmjb]

elvin, my blades were of some sort of plastic they came on a mill I bought off e-bay which never produced any power so I repalced the generator and shortened the blades to better match the new generator.

I was really pleased at the power I was getting with the new motor and blades just before it all went south.

Funny you should suggest wood blades as this is what I was thinking about on my way home this afternoon.

Jan

[elvin1949]

Jan

 "Sorry" I didn't go back and look,thought they were metal.

 Wood really will work better and not give any trouble. They are not hard to carve.

,Dan has a page on carving them.

 Storm is over {new one} tornado watches all morning but sunshine now.Got to go see what all i have left.

later

Elvin

[Birdmmjb]

SUNSHINE..... you have sunshine what does that look like?

Jan

[elvin1949]

 Kind of like a big yellow basketball.

later

Elvin

[ghurd]

I remember my grandparents mentioning something about it.

I figured it was a myth.

G-

[Birdmmjb]

I have sunshine, after what seems to be weeks of rain and fog we have sun.  The batteries are up and I'm on RE power using the computer.

I love it.

Jan