Hi Guys Greetings from Northern Ireland. I am a newbie to the board but I hope I can contribute in some small way to your discussions. I have been playing with the wind for a few years now it's the usual story of starting of with car alternators and P.M. motors to finally building the 8ft 24v Hugh Piggott machine. I also purchased one of the Future energy generators and blade sets and fitted them to a modified version of Hughes yaw and furling design so with regard to your poll I have 2 flying and im using the power. Anyway! I have recently embarked on an upgrade of my complete setup by going to a 48v system. My first purchase was a 2.5 ton Cat electric fork truck with a very good 72v battery that I reconfigured to 48v. The fork truck was an absolute bargain at only £250 or about $500 and it has proved to be a fantastic source of Parts with giant size diodes and fuses, cables etc. I have also upgraded my inverter to a 48v 3.75 kw ups I know its not ideal and that they can be bit power hungry but in my defence it was very cheap and it works very well lol the final part of phase one of the upgrade was completed to-day as I fitted the new 48v stator to the turbine, it's the standard 48v as per Hughes plans i.e. 10 coils 290 turns of #21 wire. The old 24v turbine suffered badly from stalling with the 4ft wooden blades. I tried all the usual remedies opened the gap and added resistance etc and it helped but never cured it, finally I fitted a set of 4ft GRP blades (3) from ebay and that sorted it, however it proved to be only temporary as it shed a blade about a month later. So as a result I decided to carve a new set for the upgrade but I wanted to try a larger rotor this time so I went with the Other power 10ft design, I liked the simplicity of the design and carved it using a stacked dado head cutter on a radial arm saw, with a simple jig to control the angles, it worked a treat the 3 blades where ready for sanding and oil in just under an hour. The new blades where also fitted this morning and have already proved their worth as we got 30 mph winds this afternoon. The tail started to furl at 23mph and was fully furled at 33mph with a constant 23 amps at about 50v by my reckoning that's 1150 w or there about. So phase one is complete and a total success so far but time will tell, it has at least put a smile on my face. Phase 2 is ready to start and that's where I hope you guys can help? I have a box of 56 2x1x1/2 n40 magnets and about 15 lbs of #21 wire I have a couple of acres of space and loads of potential wind as I am located in the Mourne Mountains my closest neighbours all have 4 legs 2 horns and udders full of milk! They don't mind what goes up, any ideas would be very welcome My original plan was to build another 2 machines the same as the first, as I have the moulds etc or should I put all my eggs in the one basket and go big? My latest thoughts have been to build one as before with 24 mags and 10 coils and one slightly bigger with 16 mags per rotor 32 in total and with 15 coils in a 3 phase set up, would this be viable? Should I wind the same number of turns as before ie 290 of #21 for 48v and then there is the blades size to consider? Any thoughts or ideas would be very welcome. By the way I love the site I have studied the projects pages for months but only recently found the boards I will try and post a pic if I can figure out how to lol Im better with a grinder or welder than I am with a keyboard! Best regards to all Russell
Russel; You really should include some whitespace in your posting to break it up some. Hit the spacebar and the enter key occasionally. One big long string of characters with no breaks is very hard to follow. Despite that it is an interesting read.
