AIR 403, lots of Blade questions

[esc]

Hello all,

I'm new here (1st post actually) so I'll introduce myself, then give a little back ground and finally get to my questions.  If this is too long please just skip to the questions at the end thanks.  

My name is Eric and I live on the upper Gulf coast of Texas.  I have been looking over this site for a couple of weeks and have found a lot of interesting info, which is why I decided this would be a good place for my questions.   While they are specific to the AIR 403, I am hoping to get more unbiased answers than Southwest Wind power is likely to give.

When Ike blew through a couple of months back, he ate by beach house.  There is nothing left but a slab, some pilings and a boat trailer (a few pieces of the boat).  When they started letting people back into the area a couple of weeks after the hurricane, I went down to see what I could find.  I had seen aerial photos and knew the house was gone, but I was hoping to find my 403.  I though that, since it was attached to a bunch of heavy pipe it might not have gone very far.  As it turned out I did find it...about 1000 yards away, laying on the side of the road.  There are before and after pictures here; www.methware.com/beach

When I called Southwest Wind power asking for recommendations/precautions for getting the 403 working they said it was probably not worth the effort.  Undaunted, I got to work, drained the sea water, washed out the sand, disassembled and cleaned everything and too my surprise the electronics looked to be in VERY good shape.  I replaced all the bearings ($8.00 from a local source).  Reassembled it and it spins freely when open and is hard to turn when shorted.  So far so good.

Now I need a set of blades for the thing.  There are at least 2 groups selling longer blades on e-bay for less and, of course, I could buy a set of factory blades for about  $100.00.

The idea of more power during low winds (at the expense of max power) is interesting, but I am concerned about several issues...  I'm hoping that a few of you here will have had some experience with these (even an educated guess is welcome).

#1 how durable are the aftermarket blades, compared to the OEM parts.  How well made are they?

#2 will they REALLY do any good during low winds...has anyone ever used them found a significant difference (I'm skeptical)

#3 How will they effect the OEM electronics?  Will the greater area cause it fry circuits when it goes in and out of it's voltage regulating (braking) mode?

#4 How they effect the self-regulating, high wind stall feature?  Will they stall early?  Stall late?  More noise?  Less noise?  (My guess is stall early, more noise)

#5 Balance - Are they balanced very well?  Will I need to balance them when I get them.

Basically, I'm pretty skeptical about the aftermarket blades.

BTW, I have a set of AIR X blades which I will probably attach just to test that the 403 is indeed working, but I will still have to get another set somewhere.

TIA for any help,

Eric C.

[Flux]

Most here will be pretty sceptical about the whole thing.

It is basically a high wind machine and does very little in light winds. I am inclined to think that bigger blades will make it run slower and what you gain from swept area increase you loose from lower speed.

The original blades don't stand up well to very high winds and it's anyone's guess what your scam merchant's blades will do during a storm.

If it has performed to your satisfaction before then use the makers replacement blades.  If not you could play with others but I doubt that the improvement will be significant with this alternator. The larger blades may well work better for some other alternators.

I am sure there others here who have first hand experience of these changes.

As far as I am concerned it is a dreadful machine based on a car alternator and it is effective in good wind areas as long as the wind is not too strong and you have ear plugs. In a low wind area it makes a good garden ornament.

Not what you want to hear so I hope others give a more favourable opinion.

Flux

[gotwind2]

Hello Eric.

Thats some mass damage from those shocking images in the link you provided.

Another option may be to go with some of the U.S TLG alluminium blades.

Not to everyones liking, but a lot quieter than the origial blades APPARENTLY.

http://www.tlgwindpower.com/rotors/tlg403mm.htm

Worth a look, I have a smaller 36" diameter set on an Ametek DC motor that have worked fine.

Ben.

[esc]

Yep, Ike hit us pretty hard.  90% of the buildings in the area (Bolivar Peninsula) were destroyed.

Those are interesting blades, a more or less direct fit.  But the price is higher than the factory blades so I may take Flux's advise and just get a set of factory blades.

Flux,

  Yes, it has worked to my satisfaction in the past.  It has it's limitations, but it is better than nothing.    I typically used it, in combination with a 40 watt solar panel to keep jet ski batteries charged and run some lights when camped out on the beach.  I also have a generator built from a free lawnmower engine and an old alternator off of my Camaro (inspired by the plans at epicenter.com) that I would use in a pinch.

Here is a picture of my mobile windmill tower, it is telescopic and pivots at the base so that it will lay flat and not extend past the back of the trailer when traveling.

http://www.methware.com/beach/windmillinaction2.jpg

[Flux]

They do tend to work better in coastal or marine environments with clean unobstructed wind. If you don't normally get up into the blade flutter control region you may not be bothered by the noise.

Although good the TLG blades will be way too slow for a 403 don't go down that route.

If you were happy before then stick with the original blades.

Flux

[Slingshot]

Flux,

You must have never the 403 up close, much less disassembled.  It is not remotely based on a car alternator - the 403 alternator is very much purpose-built, and has no commonality with a typical automotive design, other than the very general fact that it is iron-core.  

Whether the 403 is a "dreadful machine" or not I won't get into, but the alternator itself is actually a pretty ingenious design.  The electronics I have never liked, though.  It never made sense to climb the pole to adjust Vout, and the pulsed/sensing/regulation scheme precludes reverse-polarity protection.  All the way back to it's predecessor, the 303, a split-second of battery reversal during hookup meant a damaged regulator board.

[hamitduk]

Not to be callas, but my question here is what was it putting out before it decided to relocate to another state?

Hami

[cdog]

I have owned 2 of the 403's.

Dreadful is a compliment, I would send you my old blades but I don't know where they landed,

Cdog.

[richhagen]

Eric, I am terribly sorry to hear of the loss of your beach house in the hurricane.  A large number of people lost a lot during that storm.  

As for the 403, I would put replacement blades with similar parameters to what was on it from the factory.  It is, as has been pointed out, a high wind machine.  It is noisy at high wind speeds, which is why mine is sitting in the basement.  I would send you my blades, but I might find a less urban location for it some day.  If you put longer blades on the machine which have a similar tip speed ratio, they will spin more slowly at a given wind speed and will likely hurt your overall performance.  As it is the blades are of a high TSR design, maybe around 9 or so, and thus it would be unlikely to find a larger diameter blade set that you purchase would have a higher TSR.  

I've managed to drop my current cell phone under water thoroughly twice.  Once in a creek and once in a catch basement.  Both times I immediately removed the battery, and attempted to open what could be opened and dry out the phone as completely as possible.  The phone survived both incidents, as did a tenants phone which I treated similarly after he accidentally flushed it down the toilet.  It has been my experience that it is usually the electrolysis between leads, connections and traces with different voltages that kills wet electronics quickly.  My phone still works, which is pretty good for me since I usually only get about a year out of them before they are beaten or otherwise broken into submissive failure.  

Good luck with your home repairs.  Rich

[luckeydog]

My experience with the TLG blades have been very good.

Terry at TLG tends to under rate his blades. I do believe you will have

at least the same output as the stock blades but without the noise.

 I have no experience with the 403 and the TLG blades but if you were

to call Terry and talk to him he will give you some honest answers.

I have a set of his blades on a Ametek pm motor and they do very well for their size.

been running them for years now and no problems.

 Luckeydog

.

[luckeydog]

Just found a video link. seems the 403 has a reputation for losing a blade. this guy was lucky.

 watch the video and see why.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFU5XiMUrNw

[mikern]

Eric, I hope all works out well for you. Just another comment on TLG blades, I've been using the "boast buster" on a stepper motor for over 2 years now, and they have done a great job, and held up well. I know they are a bit pricey, but you get what you pay for, and Terry is great to deal with also. Good Luck. Mike N

[Flux]

Don't want to hijack the thread here and I certainly agree with you that the thing is a a good bit of production engineering and is well made at low cost. It also has some ingenious features such as the asymmetric 3 phase winding and the incremental magnet spacing to reduce cog.

"and has no commonality with a typical automotive design, other than the very general fact that it is iron-core."

That is what I meant, the core pack is automotive or so close to it that they may as well have use one. The core is far too small for the thing to produce reasonable power at reasonable speed. The thing works well in reasonable wind areas, is too noisy and doesn't survive very high wind areas and in our part of the world it is an ornament on most days.

The AirX solves some of the problems but with little improvement in low winds and a drastic reduction in high wind output but they solved the noise and blade failure problem and it is a better machine.

Flux  

[esc]

I never had any real gauges hooked up to it so I can only give anecdotal evidence.

My guess is that it would put out about 150 ~ 200 watts when on the beach with a stiff wind blowing.  I would guess 15, frequently gusting to 25 mph.  The reason for my guess is that it would power 2 head lights and a radio all night long without running the battery down.  Like I said, not a very scientific approach.

Also, I know that it is not a quiet machine, but once again the location of use is an important factor.  A big surf can drown out almost any noise, and I never had it in high enough winds to have experienced the "flutter noise" that I have so often heard complaints about.

All in all, the small size and easy transport, with adequate power, make it a good match for what I was doing.

[esc]

OK so what I am hearing is this:

No one has any experience with the "cheapo" blades that are available on E-Bay.  Without some sort of unbiased endorsement, I'm not going to take the chance, as they may be complete junk.

TLG blades are good, but probably not the best for what I am doing and seeing as they cost more, I'm probably better off buying a set of OEM blades.

Lots of people don't have much respect for the Air 403 (no surprise).  But in its defense, mine always performed the function for which it was purchased and lived up to  my expectations.  I really like the thing.

BTW, I had seen the video if the one that disintigrated...but again...In the video they say the electronics had burned out and it was freewheeling in high winds.  At that point disintegration is inevitable.  I can't help but think that with 90,000+ of these things out there, there are bound to be horror stories.

Thank you all for your input do date, it has been very helpful.  If anyone else has additional comments or suggestions I would still like to hear them.

Eric

[Slingshot]

What's wrong with iron core?  There's got to be a reason that all the commercially-successful products out there use it.  

The air-core alternator has two advantages - no cogging when not electrically loaded, and it's easy to build and tweak.  For that, you suffer penalties in size, weight, efficient use of materials (cost), and burnout.

OK, I'll stop.  It's off-topic for the thread, but of great interest to me.

[Flux]

Ok if it interests you then although it is off topic I think the main topic has been covered and a little digression won't hurt.

"There's got to be a reason that all the commercially-successful products out there use it. "

Yes indeed there is. Firstly man has been building alternators for over a century with iron cores and it seems strange for anyone trained in electrical engineering to do anything else.

Secondly it is the cheapest way to get a high output and if you are selling a commercial device then what sells it it power rating and cost. The average customer has nothing else to base a choice on. Why pay twice as much for a machine with half the power rating. They know nothing about energy capture or power ratings with wind speed so they have no method of choosing on any other basis.

Wind power is a special field and what works best for general power engineering doesn't always work best for wind power ( especially small wind).

Wind has this cubic power law that means that there is really nothing available in low winds and far too much to handle in high winds.

For most sites there is no real virtue in having the maximum power rating much above 20mph, so a machine producing power from 6mph to 20 mph effectively will have a good energy capture on most sites.

One producing nothing below 10 mph, having a comparable performance in the 15 to 20 mph and 5 times the power rating at 30 mph will have a worse energy capture except on a few very windy days. If you put it out at sea then the situation may be very different and that is where the AIR machines come into their own.

Iron cored machines can still perform perfectly well in these lower wind areas but all the factors that are geared to high peak output power still mess up the compromise for low winds. Iron loss delays start up and robs you of low wind energy. If you go for cheap designs then you use very high flux densities which make iron loss excessive and you use cheap core material with more loss. You keep speeds high to get high power densities and you have to use fast blades that don't like starting against drag and are worse affected by the iron loss as the loss is frequency dependent ( comes back to speed).

If you do everything to make the best of low winds with an iron cored machine then you don't end up with a cheap design but if you do it right it can be a good one.

For wind I am not at all convinced that slots are desirable, they are essential for conventional alternators where the things are never run on light load. These are designed for maximum efficiency on full load. ( the reverse of wind, unless you use mppt you can't even hope for a reasonable efficiency on full load let alone maximum).

My personal preference is for slotless iron cored radial machines but they are not as easy to build as axials and need more machining facilities and if you cock up the design you cant fiddle your way out by increasing the air gap.

Up until the days of neo there was little choice but to use slotted iron cores but there was always a low wind problem. Adapting these designs to neo without modifying the requirements was a bit of a disaster in terms of low wind results but gave never before possible top end output. I haven't built a slotted core wind turbine alternator for years and have never looked back in terms of energy capture on inland sites.

Hope this justifies hijacking this post and at least gives my point of view which you are entitled to reject if you don't agree.

Flux

[lamonto]

what size are the blades and which motor

I am running an ametek 30vdc motor with 6 24" air-x blades and struggling to get 12v with my prevailing winds of approx 10-15mph

do you think TLG blades would improve the performance and 3 or 6 blades

please email me at ianlamnt@yahoo.co.uk

Ian

[hmccoy99]

I have 2 403's on a sailboat, they put out a lot of power in the 20-25mph range and the

blade self distruct in 50-70mph thunder storms the tips brake off due to the extreme

tip speed. I have tried a pair of TSR tri natao blades 60" I cut them down to 48* and

repitched the blades to try to get the RPM's  the blades are well made but even though

he claims the blades to have a TSR of >12 I dont belive it. they will not turn the the alternator fast enough.  there is a mis match of rotor to alternator power band. The 403's are a hi RPM design and I am considering trying some of the ebay blades and cut them down to 48" ..

does anyone have a schematic of the diode/control circuit of the 403 ?

[Rover]

I have an Air-X, newer version of the 403.

1. I have tried the "Ebay" blades (hornet , eagle, whatever you want to call them)
   
2. I have tried 6 of them
   
3. I have tried 3 and 6 of them cut down to 22"
   
4. I have tried 6 of the orignal blades
   
   

bottom line... They will all spin up, but only the originals in a 3 blade configuration (as purchased) would ever produce power. If you just want to watch the blades spin, yes the other blades will do better but with no power.

As everyone else has said you, really really good wind with low turbulence.

I've even gutted the Air-x , and used my own controller/rectifier..

End of the day, replaced it with a homemade one I made from an GE ECM motor.. I get 5x the performance , with about the same package size.

Anyone want a gutted Air-X , let me know.. will go cheap

[hmccoy99]

How much you want for your gutted air x ?  do you have any spare blades I still want

to experiment with the design... havent given up yet..

henry

[hmccoy99]

Rover,

I the 403's have an odd 3 phase delta design, I have rewired mine to 3 phase wye and

remove the regulator. and I may add a voltage doubler circuit. to lower the power

band of the alternator to match the aftermarket blades... you can email me at:

hmccoy99@hotmail.com  

with your price of your air x .  

I can use the parts..

henry

[esc]

After an unexplained delay of 2 weeks on Southwest Wind Powers part my new 403 blade set and gasket finally arrived over the weekend.  So I should finally have the thing in the air in the next couple of days.  I still don't have anywhere good to put it, excect a temporary test tower.

I hope to have my trailer mounted tower finished before this weekend.  If it is ready I should get the chance to try it out at the beach this weekend.

I'll post a picture once I have the ting flying again.

Thanks again everyone for your advise on this matter.

[esc]

I finally had the 403 up in the air last weekend it seems to be working perfectly.  

I really have to say that I am very impressed with this things resiliency.  It spent days in the salt water, followed by 2 weeks in the sand, filled with salt water and an amazing amount of sand.  Then it only needed a good cleaning, new bearings and blades to get it running again.

It is a tough little machine.