Since I don't have cable, I've only seen the TV show Junkyard Wars once. It was great fun. Families pitted against each other making canons from junkyard parts and competing in a shooting match. The scrounging and building was a fascinating process, although it's somewhat unrelated to ability to aim and shoot straight. I'm not sure the best team won, but hey, that's how the game is played.
I'm often struck by the similarity of building a wind generator and competing in "Junkyard Wars".
I got my generator from a junkyard, rewound it to suit and combined it with blades I carved from lumber destined for someone's wall or ceiling. I got a tower super cheap at an auction and I cut the tail from plywood scraps. Sure, I bought a bunch of stuff new too, but only because I was too stretched for time to cruise the junkyards for the same parts or functional equivalents. Batteries I bought used and inverters and charge controllers purchased cheaply on ebay.
Like the JY wars, just building the thing isn't the only measure of success. You have to run the thing and get decent measureable results. The wars only requires a machine durable enough to win the competition. Building a wind generator means building in sturdiness and longevity. Our competition is less against our peers and more against whatever nature throws at us to test our creative engineering.
My first wind generator fell apart on the tower. It ran for about 3 hours in increasing winds before an aluminum support piece sheared off, shifting the generator angle too much and shattering the blades on the tower. It sounded like a loud zipper and was fascinating to witness. Oddly enough, I wasn't devestated. I had watched it spin for a few hours, made some measurements and was already planning what I was going to change. The destruction only pointed out another change I'd need to make. And of course it gave me an opportunity to start working on those changes sooner. It was the last time I'd ever use aluminum to support a wind generator.
Over the weekend I was planning to put a new improved wind generator up (aren't they all ?). I thought it might be ready for the elements but I was a bit slow and didn't get it up on Saturday. Saturday night it rained. No, it didn't rain, it poured. For over an hour rain pelted down so hard I couldn't see the old Ford 8n tractor parked 20 feet from the bedroom window even during the numerous lightning strikes which lit up the crackling darkness. Needless to say everything was soaked. This is a rare phenomenon here in North eastern Colorado. It makes one pause... and think... My imagination started replaying what soaking in water would do to the generator, the supports, the tail...
I didn't put it up. I couldn't bring myself to do it, not just yet. I have to rethink my strategy and make sure water, hail and lightning are dealt with. I know I'll get more than 3 hours out of this one. I just don't know how much more before the next unplanned outage. I'd like to stretch it out a bit.
