Delco Generator low output

[nmwindrider]

I am new to wind power this is my first windmill. I am planing on making several as time and money are available.  

I purchased 12v Delco generator on ebay i am only getting about 6 to 8 amps into my batteries with a wind speed of about 25 mph. with the batteries disconnected I get about 90v. How can I get more power. The windmill was sold as a 1Kw system. I don't expect to get this much but would like to get more then i am.

I have 6 6V 225ah batteries in 3 groups of 2 for a 12v system.

The 1000W inverter that I have shuts down at 11.3v does anyone have any suggestions? I have thought about reconfigering the batteries into 2 groups of 3 for 18v and then to the inverter to deeper cycle the batteries.

I have several things to experment with. A GE drier that has a 10 to 1 ratio gear box on the back of the drum, an electric boat moter, and an angle grinder with a 4 t0 1 ratio.

Any help or seggestions would be appreciated.

thanks

NMWindrider

[kurt]

1. car alternators don't make very good wind turbines no matter what you do to them.
   
2. buying a wind turbine off eBay is one of the fastest ways to get ripped off there is unless you really know what you are looking for.
   
3. your inverter shuts down when the battery voltage gets to low to keep you from totally destroying your batteries and really if you want to get a long life out of them you would never discharge them low enough that the inverter shuts off on low voltage except in an emergency.  
   

[jonas302]

The inverters I have played with also cut out above 15 volts

google the board there has been a few alternator conversions done with magnets

If nothing else you have a tower blades and wind to build a good alternator

[Flux]

I ignored your first diary entry when you were singing the praises of this silly thing you bought based on a load of open circuit voltages when driven with a drill.

Now that you have tried in real life you start to find out that the wonderful thing produced by experts doesn't save you any money over building something yourself.

The ultimate thing that determines what you get from a wind turbine is the size of the blades, the wind speed and how well the parts are matched.

You give no information on anything except the useless voltage figures you first quoted.

At best you are playing with something similar to the AirX and it will take a lot of wind to do much. Car alternators are intended to be compact and produce power cheaply at high speed. You eventually have to accept that to get reasonable power from wind you need large blades and a slow and costly alternator or a speed increasing transmission.

Wind generators also needs very high efficiencies in the lowest winds, where power is strictly limited anyway.If you take something designed to produce about 500W with modest efficiency at 5000 rpm you mustn't expect much from it at speeds that a wind turbine are capable of.

Car alternators and small scrap dc motors are being advertised everywhere as the basis of decent wind turbines, in reality they are toys if you want something useful.

Flux

[Flux]

Sorry, I have realised that these two almost identical diary entries are from different people.

Don't take all my criticism too seriously as it was aimed at the first person and he may still be very happy.

The basic comments about the futility of car alternators still apply and they will only produce worthwhile outputs on very high wind sites. They may work well enough on the best inland sites and may supply the modest needs of a boat at sea in a real good wind area.

Flux

[Southbuck]

lol, well it was my diary you must have looked at. seems to me ive read of people posting their results on how their progect was going over and over. i posted simple results of voltage, it took 5 min time to change out the stators. most here on this board only want to post about their home made gennys, to me thats fine but there are other ways to produce power. magnets, wire and hardware are very expensive to build a generator from scratch. i bought a stator and rotor from windblue assembled it in a gm alternator and ran tests with a couple stock gm stators. the results are the only thing i attempted to post. as it is, with the 22ga stator installed i can super light a 12 v bulb with less than a full revolution by hand. this person may want to check with windblue and look at their different stators. i have less than $200 in these two parts from windblue. hope this helps

[finnsawyer]

I wasn't happy with the editors removing comments from your Post.  I can't even bring up my comment myself anymore.  It takes time to compose the comments, and if that practice continues I will probably abandon the site rather than continue wasting my time.  I had no particular complaint with closing the thread, but the comments should have remained.  I take a dim view of removing anyone's comments.  Once posted they should remain archived, warts and all.

[Bruce S]

NMwindrider;

   What you have can be viewed as a beginner's guide to wind RE. More than likely ( without seeing the link or specs of the unit you bought) I'd say you got a pretty good small beginner's system. Not knowing what you paid for it, it's hard to say if you got taken or not.

At max power you'll have going into your battery set about 6Amps at 12Vdc that's rougly 72 watts. Very usable.

The 1000 watt invertor is doing it's job prefectly, let it keep on doing that.

IF you want to do more , you'll need to invest a bit more time and give us some more details of what you want to do and the specifics of your system.

The guage of the wire inside, the regulator settings the blade diameter , how high up in the "good" air it is and such. Also, we'll need to know some info of your inverter connections. What is the guage wire going from the batteries to the inverter? how long is the wire?

What types of loads are you working with on the inverter?

A word of caution DO NOT let the mill free wheel like that, always try to keep some kind of load on it, even if you're working on the down stream stuff, go get an old car battery and connect to lines to the battery or short them together. A free wheeling mill is the quickest way to have it die an eraly death!!!

Also; do not connect the batteries so you have higher voltage going into the inverter, at best the inverter will shut down from over voltage, at worst , you'll burn up the inverter.

Cheers

Bruce S

[TomW]

Finn;

You are diverting from the thread but I will say this:

He took issue with my attempt to help, called us snobs and requested I not comment in his Diary and I should remove it. Also claimed he did not want comments. By removing the comment of mine it removed the replies. Per his request.

No need to comment because I already know you will automatically take the opposite view and it would simply further divert the thread.

Damned if I do and damned if I don't.

Thanks for your concern.

Tom.

[Bruce S]

Hello TomW

And did you thank him [southbuck] for his kind words by showing him the door? Your much kinder than I would've been

My apologies for straying from the post.

Bruce S

 

[Southbuck]

Tom, what you do is ASSUME. you asumed i have no clue of how ohms law works, you assumed i had no quality tester although what i use is perfect in the heating and air business (but its limited on dc measurments). i could have used a divider if i could find the right resistors but it seems more common sence to simply buy a new tester that can check dc voltage. nobody likes a smart ass. i came to this forum to learn not to listen to glory grabbers trying to belittle the new guy.

[WindHarvester]

Well said Southbuck!

[Flux]

Southbuck, just hang around and you will learn.

What you posted was voltage. You can get that at any speed from any quantity of magnets, the whole thing need only cost peanuts to generate volts.

What happens when you load it is a very different issue. When you produce a load curve of charge into a battery against speed and input power we shall have a good idea if your commercial built alternator is going to produce a good turbine.

The problems of low output that nmwindrider is having are typical of car alternator conversions and I am afraid that your alternator is not going to come out so well when you load it. You may be less tickled when you try to get real power out of it.

These little things are fine for small props and that means high winds to produce reasonable power. If you rate the thing in a 45mph wind it may be quite impressive but on the average site on the average day it may do very little.

There is no fundamental reason why you can't buy commercial things as cheaply as producing your own, they have the advantage of quantity purchase. What you pay for self build largely is determined by what you get cheap. If you go out to buy everything You may find the commercial price lower. If the end result is not satisfactory then you may not be better off.

There are a few reasonable quality Chinese import PMAs at very reasonable price and if I was going to buy something I would go that route rather than something based on a car alternator, but we all have our opinions and make our choices. I look forward to your experience with this thing so stick around and let us know the final verdict.

Flux

[Bruce S]

Southbuck;

Since I put you in my post to TomW, I'll jump back in here and ask the original poster to foregive me.

I did post a suggestion or two for him.

I read your post,

No details on anything on other than what you got from the machine you bought, just a post.

Then you asked not to have comments. then have them removed.

Got Finn mad at TomW for doing what you asked.

Also, since this was your first time posting, as best I could find. We can't know your abilites with you saying so.

Most new posters give us a little of their back ground and what they're trying to do, not just post open voltage readings.

As you think TomW did, you assmued you knew where TomW was coming from.

Bruce S

[Southbuck]

if tomw did what i asked he would have deleted MY post. and that was telling him simply that i dident ask for his opinion, which if he left it up you could have read it. my mistake was thinking i could use this site to actually keep records for myself, say diary. yes, i posted open voltage at low rpm with a delco alternator, this was intended to be nothing more than a reference for myself. once again,,,,diary. sorry to all, not here to cause trouble.

[Southbuck]

http://www.windstuffnow.com/main/gm_alt_mod.htm

my no load voltage is even higher than this one.

[TomW]

Well, buck, fine by me. You earned yourself a seat in the Read Only club awhile where you can hopefully learn some manners and how to post on a forum or maybe just when to walk away.

I have no requirement to take BS from new people at all.

[TheCasualTraveler]

Flux, you wrote,

""There are a few reasonable quality Chinese import PMAs at very reasonable price and if I was going to buy something I would go that route rather than something based on a car alternator""

I've read posts from you along those lines several times and just have to ask which PMA's you are talking about? Please know I won't take what you say as any sort of endorsement, guarantee or the like but just an opinion. I have wondered if this one from WindBlue might be OK.

http://www.windbluepower.com/Permanent_Magnet_Alternator_Wind_Blue_Low_Wind_p/dc-540.htm

[vawtman]

Hi Bruce

 I (assume) your right and well put    

 Mark

[elvin1949]

Andy

 It is an automotive alt. modded  I.E. GM_DELCO.

Not a good choice for wind.

later

Elvin

[Flux]

No that is a car alternator.

I have tested a nice alternator from Ginlong technology or something that was well made and seemed like a nice choice for about 8ft. They have others intended for grid tie.

I don't know of the source, one off cost would be prohibitive, but in reasonable quantity the price was very reasonable.  This was a test sample so I can't comment on general availability.

Flux

[tecker]

  The alternator is dedicated to speeds of 800 rpm and gereater the wire size translates the higher voltages to current with the battery impeadance and vehical overall impedance . Everything in the alternator is set for speed ;rotor ,stator and rotor coil . When you add mags to the rotor  they buck at high current which locks in a power band  heat becomes a factor at higher rpm where normally the regulation kicks in and holds the rotor flux down .

[phil b]

I will add one to what Tecker said. The bearings in the GM, Ford or anyone else's alt are not made to handle such abuse. That is, being ran 24/7. They are also made for around 100,000 miles and they seem to majically jam up. If you fly your alternator for very long in a windy area, you will reach that number fast.

Please don't take offense. We are trying to save you the frustration that several of us have been through before. Even Mother Earth News tried the alt. in the early 1980's.Their's flopped too.

I would suggest you try a small electric motor or build one from scratch. You'll be much happier with it. This site contains gennys made from anything from box fans to large 3 phase motors. Pick a small one to build and have fun!

[jimjjnn]

Tom W, You did Just Fine. Thanks

[bob g]

i would concur with the pee poor brgs of a typical automotive alternator

specifically the ones with the tiny rear needle brgs or mini ball brg

which 90% of them use.

if you are intent on an automotive alternator, you might look up a prestolite/leece neville 110-555jho, at least it has large ball brgs front and rear. it is a large frame truck alternator, and has a much larger diameter rotor and stator than the puny delco 10si which is a joke.

in stock form the 555 will produce about 90 amps into a 12volt battery at around 1500rpm, so i would expect maybe if rewound around 20 or 30 amps at maybe 400rpm.

but you still have the rotor current about a 100 watts worth that is a loss, unless you fit the rotor with neo's.

i would go with the 555 anyday before a delco for a windmachine, at least you would get something that might be useful for all the effort.

check your local hd truck dealers, the core alternators go in the scrap bin, no one will rebuild them because they sell the so cheap you can't afford to invest even an hour in labor to rebuild one. you should be able to get a core for free and they usually only need new brushes or maybe a regulator.

of all the automotive alternators the 555 is probably the one most able to get you something in return for your effort.

again the 10si is a joke in my opinion,

bob g

[bj]

O.K folks, I have real data on Alt bearings.  Using a G.M. alt, rewound

and a Neo core.  5 foot blades.  Have taken great care to use the very

same bearing through 6 tries.  Different windings etc.  26 months, almost

to the day, it started to growl a bit.  It will come down tomorrow.  My point being, I guess, that a 6203 bearing (C-3) is meant to turn at about

30,000 r.p.m. Under a radial load. They are greased at the factory (not much) because the

high r.p.m. causes heat and increases lubrication.  In -40 conditions

there isn't much heat.  You need to alter the lubrication to what your

purpose is.  I injected about 2 CC of 20-50 Synthetic into the bearing

at the onset.  2 years is a good life I think.  This might be just good

luck, but I will keep up the actions exactly, and see what happens.

    For those who will want to know, SKF 6203 2rns.  Also, for those

who would ask, the back roller bearing is fine.  Same treatment. My guess

is that the front bearing takes up most of the load.  Not like a belt

condition.

bj