Cart before the Horse

[mikewhitted]

I am a newbie trying hard not to rush into wind power, but it's hard.

I have picked up the home brew wind book, but not before buying 36-1"x2"x3/4" n50 magnets, & 14ga. mag wire! I know I should have waited!

But now that I have them, can I use them on a 10' wind turbine without a lot of hassle?

are the magnets to thick & strong. Can I just increase the rotor size, and air gap? and a few other problems? I would like to build a 24v or 48v stator but still trying to figure it all out. I would like to learn, but have not had any exposure to electrical generation. Can I do it, I am a fairly intelligent person, but need help in this wind turbine area. thanks guys!

[electrondady1]

with that, you should be able to break two of the mags, and still build a powerful wind turbine.

three phase ,dual rotor ,16poles 12 coils.

google search the board to fine the mag spacing and the rotor dia.

read and read

you'll be fine

lots of people here will help you especially it you can ask the proper questions

[TheCasualTraveler]

Welcome Mike,

     Sorry to say this but I see one problem. There just isn't much consistent wind in central Florida. You will get something from time to time in spring, occasional windy days or during a storm but mostly you'll get nothing usable. I know, I live here but I am on the coast where we get a coastal breeze and it's only just barely good enough for wind power as a hobby. If you do go forward with it plan on a high tower and that your return on investment will be the fun and learning.

     Florida is a state for solar power. Check out BuildItSolar.com

[CmeBREW]

Hello,

Or if you decide it is feasible, you could make the more common 10' mill here and sell the remainder of the magnets on Ebay :

http://www.otherpower.com/turbineplans.shtml

Looks like 48v is best and easiest (for beginner) with those big magnets since you only need to wrap ONE strand of wire for the coils. (I would use 16ga. since you have bigger mags to avoid stall. Or possibly even bigger)

For a beginner, making a 12-14 footer (16 pole/12 coil) and having to mostly guess on your coils, could be too much to tackle.  Thats the great thing about following Dans or Hugh's machines plans as closly as possible, since they have already done all the guess work and have very productive and safe machines.

 

[Flux]

You have a lot of magnet there and you could easily manage what you want with 24 magnets. trying to use all of them may not make things easy.

For 48v you could manage with 12 poles ( 24 magnets). Aim for a stator nearly 1" thick and you can probably get something like 130 turns of your wire in with a single strand.

If you want 24v then you will need to wind with 2 in hand.

This will be quite powerful and may stall but as others have hinted that you are in a low wind area the stall may be of no real consequence as it will only hit you in higher winds. If it does become a problem then you can always add a bit of series resistance in the line.

If you choose to make it 16 pole then you will certainly need to include significant line resistance.

Flux