The turbine is not with me,
I haven't got any place for such one.
We built it with Taisto Suihkonen
and it is at his place.
The problem Taisto has been facing
is regular slow wind speeds.
So finally we made the wind rotor
with the specifications as above.
(3 m dia, four blades each made of seven
10 mm x 100 mm wooden boards and
rough airfoils cut after.)
The alternator is quite similar
as the original 'Volvo OP' alternator.
Single phase axial alternator,
single magnet rotor with laminates.
It is made of a Mercedes front wheel,
with the disk dia 28 cm.
24 neo magnets, round 12 mm x 30 mm
each. We have tried with different
coils and at present there are
40 turns in each coil. The stator
is made of a 2 cm thick 'Industrial Formica'
plate and for the laminates we have
tried several methods, plastic coated
iron wire seems to be working OK.
The exact figures about
watts available at different
wind speeds are not available,
because Taisto never measured them.
At present the setup is done so that
it almost at once when started moving,
starts charging 12 V batteries.
A secret by Taisto to achieve that,
was to use a transformer before
the rectifier (1) so that
the voltage rises high at slow speeds.
The current can bypass the transformer when
the speed increases, because there is another
rectifier (2) parallel to the transformer,
which leads the current to the batteries
directly.
There is as well a side furling system,
similar as used by Hugh Piggott
and many others with the gravity
balanced tail system.
I will try posting pictures of
the machine later.
- Hannu