My first wind generator is up!

[RandomJoe]

For a few different reasons I wasn't originally intending to get into wind power - most notably because my city has a blanket ban on wind turbines!  But I've spent enough time here to catch the bug...  Bought the Dans' book, and realized I'm not yet set up to build anything like that, and having more money than sense (being single can have that effect at times!) I wound up buying an Air Breeze turbine.

First, I'll outline my challenges, to explain my less-than-ideal installation:

City ordinance banning turbines!  Thus I have to keep it low so it's not too visible.

Small lot, can't put up much of a tower anyway without risk of hitting a neighbor's house.

I live at the foot of a hill - four houses to my south, the top of the hill is higher than the roof of my house!  Naturally, the prevailing winds around here are S-SW.  (I figured out it would take a 60 foot tower just to clear the roofline of the houses at the top of the hill.)

So not a lot of chance of getting much wind speed, thus why I went with the Breeze - it appeared the best bet for low wind conditions.

I don't expect lots of power from it, just the fun of playing with it.  And as others have said, it's a lot more fun to watch than the solar panels!

Here's the end result:

The wires crossing the frame are an HF dipole and a guy for a higher antenna just out of the frame (I'm an amateur radio operator).  Neither is anywhere near the turbine.

You can see off to the left my anemometer.  It's mounted about 8 feet above the ridge of my roof, and about 25 feet off the ground.  The turbine is 18 feet off the ground, and just peeks above the roofline of the house.  I could push it up another 2-3 feet, and at this point every foot seems to make a big difference, but then it would be visible from the street. It's already visible in a narrow window to either side of the house as you pass by, don't want to draw too much attention...!

But it does work.  It's regularly providing 25-30W, and on the stronger sustained gusts (around 20MPH) it'll get up to around 120W.  (It's advertised as 200W at 28MPH.)  Of course, the wind isn't nice and steady, so it slows down and even stops fairly often.  Even on this overcast day, my Harbor Freight solar panels have outperformed it in total AH!

Still, average wind speed at my house was only around 9 MPH today with plenty of lulls to 6 or less (below cut-in).  Will have to wait for a windier day.  And if it's a south wind, that'll be a heckuva windy day - my averages run about 1/3 what the nearby airport reads for south winds!  Fortunately, anything not directly south immediately increases my wind speeds.

A north wind is most useful - I see about 2/3 what the airport does for those.  I'm not too keen on any more winter weather, but it would be nice to have some of those winds again to test this out.  I have a pretty clear shot to the north, so tend to get much more stable winds from that direction as well.

Putting this in also prompted a battery upgrade.  I was using a single 100AH AGM under my ham bench.  That is apparently too small for the Air Breeze (they recommend a minimum of 400AH for a 12V system, and I did have some problems with voltage regulation on it) so finally made my long-planned upgrade to 6 T-105s cabled for 12V.  Now I can run the ham bench for a week! :-)

[electronbaby]

"thus why I went with the Breeze - it appeared the best bet for low wind conditions."

haha thats too funny.

Im sure you will learn a lot more from hanging out on this board, that the SWWP site.

Nice to meet you  :-)

[RandomJoe]

Perhaps I should have said "the best bet of the available commerically-available models I found that are sized under 4 foot in diameter"?  I didn't find much in the way of small turbines anyway, and of those the reviews I found indicated the Breeze would start working soonest.  Highest power output - while nice - wasn't my primary goal, earliest cut-in was.

I spent very little time on the SWWP site, considering there's almost nothing there anyway...  In fact, the only thing I did there was download the manual.

At any rate, it does appear to perform close to their claims - unlike their Air-X model.  One of the reviews mentioned that too, SWWP seems to have given much more realistic numbers for this unit based on their (the reviewers') testing.  Still didn't match the test perfectly, especially at the high end, but much closer.

Last night a storm wandered through.  My average windspeed for several hours was 9-10 MPH, and it put 5AH into the bank - about 13Wh.  Not saying that's much, but it's 5AH my solar panels sure didn't make overnight! ;-)  And it isn't too far off what the reviews suggested 10 MPH would give.  There was also a strong gust around 4AM, hit 34MPH wind speed and the meter showed 194W into the battery for a peak.

Again, my poor site location affects performance more than anything else.  During that storm, the actual wind speeds were 28 MPH gusting to 35.  And - again - I don't get a nice smooth consistent airflow, it's nothing but gusts and lulls.

[DanB]

Yes, from everything I've heard, the air breeze is a big improvement over the 403 and the x with regard to noise, low wind  performance - and more honest/realistic ratings by the manufacturer.  Not much energy to be had in your situation but looks like you're having fun!