Giant water wheel

[windcruiser]

The Giant water wheel 5 meters diameter under construction.

Water wheel Mounted on the running base.

The water wheel running.

[Kevin L]

That thing is huge. Nice Job.

 What is the wall thickness for your lumber, as it looks a little thin for that diameter of water wheel.

Kevin L

[tecker]

 I love this stuff . So fine to see folks master this technology and implement it to care for their needs from a free resource . This ingenuity moves humanity forward.

[vawtman]

Hi Windcruiser

 Nice work your doing.

 Is this gonna drive that big axial machine you made earliar?How fast does it spin?

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

Generic undershot or poncelet?

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

Never mind.  I see that the paddles are angled.  I'm presuming it's either a poncelet or a close approximation.

[hiker]

more info here............

        http://www.craftskills.biz/hydro-cameroon.htm

[windcruiser]

It turns at 10RPM. Has curved wings inside a five meter diameter. It turns the 15kwn turbine at 1100rpm which we geared.

Simon

[DanB]

Very neat stuff.

Im a bit confused though - from the webpage I see the large 4' diameter axial flux machine geared up and running 6 100 Watt llight bulbs, but certainly your not running that large alternator at 1100 rpm?  Are you still using the axial flux machine or have you decided to go with something more conventional?

How much power do you think is actually available from the system?

[jmk]

 I bet it's nice to see some real power. That power is probably pretty constant too. That is the biggest axial flux alternator that I have ever seen. It looks like you have had some great success. I hope it continues to run for a long time for you.

[vawtman]

Hi Dan

 That seems a little out of wack to me also.

[windcruiser]

Still running the giant axial flux we did gearing yes.

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

That [1100 RPM] seems a little out of wack to me also.

Why?  That's only 18 1/3 revs/sec, compared to the 60ish of a two-pole motor.  Nothing but a disk, magnets, and glue on that rotor.  Balance it right and it should spin just fine.

Gives you 330 Hz if I've counted the coils and magnets right.  Close to the 400 Hz of military aircraft equipment.  High frequency and fast magnet motion means higher voltages and thus lower currents (and much lower I2R losses) for a given amount of power.  That lets you have much more power from a given amount of copper and a given amount of stator heating.

330 Hz will be fine for old tech resistive loads (like incandescents and resistive heaters) and new tech raw rectifying switching systems (like switcher power supplies and compact fluorescents).  Transformer-based stuff might work or not, depending on the particulars.  (But forget about inductance-limited stuff like older fluorescent-lamp ballasts.  No burnout, but no light either.)

[RP]

The rim speed is 157 mph!

[DanB]

Like RP said - the rim speed would be rediculous, I doubt the magnets would stay in there unless some measure (other than resin) was employed to hold them there.  Even then - it's very very fast for such a large thing and I don't see why that large alternator should need to go nearly that fast.  This is not something you can really compare to a two pole motor...

I think there is a lot of detail missing in this story - I hope windcruizer fills it all in for us.  he says 1100 rpm, it makes me think they're using a standard generator head.

Also - (and I could be very wrong about this) - looking at the wheel, and the head, I cannot imagine that there's that much power available here (not 10KW I don't think) - so I'm curious how much power they're actually getting from it.  No matter what - its quite a neat project.