August Workshop 2009 Part Four

[DanB]

So by Thursday (4th day) we got a really nice 12 foot diameter wind turbine finished (pictured above with Jim).  Next steps: talk about towers, lower my tower, then build a 75' tower out of 12 inch tubing on Crystal Mountain, and install a 20 foot diameter wind turbine that's been sitting around now for two years!

We moved everyone about 3 miles up to Tom/Mary's place on Crystal mountain.  Pictured above is a 20' wind turbine, tower couplers, a big winch, steel cable, turnbuckles, thimbles, nuts, bolts, copper wire... etc.  Basically a wind power system 'kit'.  The goal... put it all together in a day and a half.

We built the pivot for the tower last winter, George and Tom installed it a couple months ago.  The line is buried in conduit - overall it's about 300' to the batteries, it's three strands of #4 wire.

We built the winch last winter.  It's a huge old winch off a tractor or something that Tom scored off ebay.  I think it has a 10:1 worm gear box on it... (not nearly enough gear reduction) so we added a 50:1 worm gear box that we had laying around and ran that directly with a 1hp 1750 rpm motor.  It takes right at 15 min to raise the tower with this thing.  It's held to the ground pretty well... its welded to an old tractor bucket buried 4' down with about 2 yards of concrete/lots of re-bar under it.

First task at hand was to build the gin pole.  The ground is not quite level here... the end of the gin pole is about 10 foot off the ground when assembled.  We used Toms little Ford tractor to lift the tubing into the coupler.

Building the gin pole was fairly exciting...

The bottom of the tower is only 10 feet long.  We used that as a gin pole to raise the gin pole.   Pictured above is the gin pole going up.

We used a high quality 'come-along' to pull the gin pole up.  Quite a fair bit of work actually...

Once the gin pole was up we assembled the tower.  First we built 50 foot of tower, raised it, adjusted it ~ then lowered it and built the rest.

Above we are raising the first 50 feet.

We had a team of folks cutting cable to the right length, and tightening cable clamps.

Once we got 50 feet perfectly adjusted we built the rest.  Pictured above is the top guy wire mount on the tower.. its 12 inch pipe which fits perfectly over 12 inch tubing.

Once the tower was finished... time to install a wind turbine!  Above Greg is putting a fresh coat of linseed oil on the blades.

The 20' wind turbine is quite heavy so we used the tractor to carry it to the end of the tower.

Pictured above Greg wires the alternator up to the line and builds the cable we use for strain relief.

Fitting the blades to the alternator.

Starting to look big!!!  We raise the tower just enough so we can get the blades high enough to balance.

By 5:30 PM on Saturday afternoon we had it up and running!

It also happened to be Toms Birthday... nice gift I guess!  We celebrated.  The machine seems to work fine.. it's a nice installation I think, easily 30 feet above anything within a half mile I should think.  In seemingly no wind at all we quickly saw over 300 Watts output into his system.  What a fun week.. lots learned and lots of work done.

Thanks to everyone that came to learn.. help out...  lend tools etc.  We all had a lot of fun I think!

[Old F]

Hey Dan

Looking back nine years ago

What would you have said or done if some one told your  were  all this would lead you.

An all the folks you will have  helped ?

Call them crazy

Laugh your donkey off

Run screaming  in to the night

Or all the above  : )

Many thanks to you an the folks that make this site one of the best in the world

Are we having fun yet

Were having so much fun it should be illegal

Old F

[Volvo farmer]

Freaking amazing. I'm spending my afternoons and Saturdays for weeks trying to remember how to weld with an old Lincoln cracker box and a 7500W generator to get 40 foot of steel into the air. Here you guys are building beautiful 75 foot towers that you get up and running in two days.

Nice report. If you have some time, I am very curious as to what that Greg guy is doing with electrical tape to build a cable that you use for strain relief. It seems like an alternative solution  to the Chinese finger trap method, and I am very interested in that as I am at that stage of production right now.

 

[ruddycrazy]

Hi Dan,

       Great work again mate, if I may offer a suggestion --- on pic 12 the nicely made guy terminations are riding on what looks like a 3/8" bolt. My suggestion is to make a bush that will go with a neat fit on the bolt and just smaller than the cable guide so the tension can fully maintained and the stress on the bolt is greatly reduced. I'd hate to see a failure due to the guy bolts when a storm goes thru although this might not of been a failure in the past Murphy might be waiting.

Sadly my suggestions of holding a workshop over here with you guys, to date I only have 2 people committed. I suppose one day I get enough to get you guys over here.

Regards Bryan

[dnix71]

What do you plan to use for rust-proofing?

I like trees, but in this case you need a pretty tall tower just to catch some air.

Is there some way to counter-weight the 10 foot gin pole or base to make raising/lowering the main pole easier?

[K3CZ]

well, lost that one with a wrong keystroke-

Question for the Dan's:  How do you handle the problem of County building regulations in Colorado?  Around here (central suburban MD) you cannot build anything more than a backyard fence without PE approved structural drawings and a $75 building permit, plus numerous visits from various County building inspectors.

(footings, sediment control, calculation checking,etc,etc.)

All this is complicated by the fact that our wind resources are so marginal that at least 120 ft. of tower is required, and that brings out the NIMBY'S in force.

Magnificent jobs!

[brokengun]

That is an interesting question that I would like to know the answer to as well. Granted in most of the places you hold the workshops.... it appears to be pretty remote.

[DanB]

It Can be quite a pain.  Rules here say that if you have enough land then a 'business' (which technically this site is) can have a 75' tower without a variance (we're pushing our luck slightly there) I am not clear if rules apply to hub height or the top of the blades in this case.  The tower base and anchors are in bed rock so that bit is easy.  So at this time the tower is not permitted but drawings for it are about to be 'stamped' by a local civil engineer which is exciting, and then... should a permit ever be required it should be fairly easy to aquire.  This is a remote place and it's not uncommon for folks to build/drill wells etc without permits however it can cause problems, especially if neighbors become annoyed.  In this case there is only one neighbor and they were quite keen to help with the project.

It would be nice if rules regarding towers were based slightly more on reality with regard to the height requirements to make wind energy work.  On this site, 70' is pretty marginal actually (we are just at about 30' above the trees - forest is a high friction surface and it would be nice to be higher here).

[SparWeb]

Dan might have missed your question: I think they're using a steel cable to carry the weight of the copper wire cable.  You would attach the steel cable in a way to hang down the center of the tower, along with the copper wires.  Then at regular intervals, attach the power wire cable to the steel cable, so that each interval only has to support a few pounds.  The steel cable will carry the total load.  A lot healthier for the copper wires, jackets, connectors, etc not to have to be suspended too far.  

I'm comfortable with my tower's 45 foot dangle.  In my case, the bolts going through the pipe joints add a lot of support to the wire because of the tight space in the "pie-shape" space that the cable must go through.

[Volvo farmer]

Naw, I think he was ignorin' me :-)

That's kinda what I figured they were doing. I might have enough 1/4" cable left over to try that. I didn't like the extension cord idea because my wire run will be with #8 and I could only find cords with #10. Seems cable and tape and regular THHN might end up about the same price as an extension cord anyway.

Thanks.

[taylorp035]

In McKean, Pennsylvania, you can't anything with out miles of red tape.  I want to put up a windmill, but there is a 35 ft zoning ordnance (my house is questionable here), airport runway issues, and major high tension power lines.  I sure wish these issues would be resolved before our electric rates double in 18 months(all electric house too).

[jmk]

     Nice set up. I need to build a tower tall with that configuration. Then maybe ad a backhoe bucket. Stainless steel kegs would do the trick. I am having fun brewing my own beer. Great to read!

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

I thought using the first segment of the tower as a "gin pole for the gin pole" was particularly cute, in an "of COURSE!" way.

[Boss]

Way to go guys

Always a pleasure to see your reports.

Obviously this is one beautiful wind installation. How many watts are they hoping for? Is this system part of other renewable energy generation systems?