realtime windmill statistics for 16' machine

[jacquesm]

I have spent the night hacking together a rudimentary data logger using a meter with a serial output and a 'wrap' board (meant for wireless access).

Every minute the board samples the current produced by the machine and posts a record of that here on reresource.org.

The display is very crude right now, it just shows the last 10 minutes of the statistics and the maximum power ever reached. The voltage is still fixed at 50 because I don't have more than one input on that meter. In two weeks time I'll start on a pic chip based board that will measure Amps, volts, windspeed, direction and core temperature.

Until then this is the best I could hack together in a day or so.

[mlz]

Very cool.  I'd be interested in the PIC based one.  We've thought about something to sample for a MRTG graph.  It's only been about 20 years since I played with electronics, other then a resistor, cap, and such for the turbines.  Maybe it's time to dust off those old memories.

For me it would be awesome as we've planned at least 6 turbines, would be nice to see if one were having problems via our monitoring software, same way the servers yell at us (cell phone, e-mail)

[Old F]

What  PIC are you using ?  I am just getting started programming in basic

I am more use to ladder for PLCs than any thing else.

Right now I am working on automating a Briggs powered battery  charger using a Splat PLC.

So many fun tools and toys so little time :  )

Old F  

[jacquesm]

I'll be doing this on an 871

[iFred]

Jacquesm - This is the transmitter & receiver boards. How many do you want?

http://www.internetfred.com/remote/recv.html

Thanks!

Fred.

[windstuffnow]

jacquesm,

   I noticed on your wind calculation page you used the formula...

Diameter^2 x Velocity^3 x .0012

A quick observation about the diameter squared...

I've always used a different formula for sq ft being an old automotive designer...

Say 6 ft diameter... 6^2= 36 square ft is actually a bit over the actual square footage.

The actual would be 6^2 x .7854 ( or pi R sqrd) comes out to 28.27 sq ft.  The formula I use actually came from finding the cubic inch of an engine.

You also mentioned 80% from the blade an 80% from the alternator as the criteria and in my mind the best achievable from the blade would be 60% of V^3 to meet the Betz theory.   In reality you'll most likely see around a 40-45% blade with an overall efficiency (alernator included)of around 25-45%.

My 6.5 ft blade makes 815 watts in a 32 mph wind so the efficiency at that point is way down to around 15% overall but in a 10 mph wind its up around 50%.

Just an observation

[jacquesm]

Hey Ed,

Which page would that be ? It might be TomW or Wolv actually wrote it but it's credited falsely to me, do you have a link ?

Thanks !

j.

[jacquesm]

reading that stuff I think the 80% is relative to betz's 60% being 100, or 'relative efficiency'. The 60% is the theoretical maximum, which then becomes 100% for further calculations.

[skravlinge]

Cool. You got the average down to a dozen decimal figures .

[windstuffnow]

  It was on the "formula" section to the wind calculator page.  http://www.reresource.org/Formulas/Windpower_Calculator/

  I've been following your wind turbine construction as time allows and it's very nice to say the least.  I wish I had more electronics skills to do the data logging as you are.   My logging is from the wind meter to the trimetric which isn't always real accurate.  

  Keep up the great work!  Looks like your having fun!

Windstuff Ed

 

[jacquesm]

hehe, I'd say about 3 (the first three !) are significant, feel free to ignore the rest until I have figured out how to format it properly.

As I said, this is pretty rough stuff

[skravlinge]

I ruff way is to script it on the webpage round up with javascript.