wind generator output

[eraser]

I see that the hornet wind generator here http://www.hydrogenappliances.com/Hornet.html is unregulated and puts a lot more voltage in to a battery than its holding capacity

the 24 volt version the HT 24 puts out 62 volts at 30mph wind speed and 92 volts at 60mph as seen in this chart voltage???

the generator does not use a regulator ,they use a regulator on the batterys to dump extra power to a load.

How does this setup work?

[Gary D]

Eraser, your battery bank is the "regulator". Any voltage over the battery voltage becomes amps into your battery bank. In a perfect situation, all voltage would become amps, but in the real world losses (heating in the stator) burn off drastic ammounts of potential power.

 If you buy one of these units, then build Dan B's 10 footer (for a 12 volt system), or Hugh's 8 or 9 footer, you will see that the real power is in increasing blade diameter (more avalible watts per mph). Most people see low average windspeeds, and harvesting the most power between 7 to 15 mph seems the most usefull way to charge a system throughout the year. Both Dan's, and Hugh's systems furl, or turn partly out of the wind to survive high storm winds while charging. Ed at windstuff now has a kit for do it yourselfers to build. Many options are available, just don't expect to see 800 watts into your batteries often from the genset you posted or you may be very disapointed.   Not worth 2 cents, hopefully someone with one of these units will chime in with what actual preformance they get... Gary D.

[TomW]

eraser;

Not sure how to say this in any sort of "PC" way so I will just say it right out.

Those people over at hydrogen appliances.com are at best misleading or [my personal opinion] outright liars.

Personally, I would not believe them if they told me water was wet and the sky was up.

My personal opinion only but I think you will find many hold the same opinion. I have contacted them on different occasions for realistic data and they always respond with smoke and mirrors.

T

[zubbly]

Hi Eraser!

my 2 cents worth.

when you buy a car or any long lived (hopefully) piece of equipment, you always check it out well. lift the hood, kick the tires, feel the weight of the item, hold it in your hands and look at the guts of the thing.

strange how you never seem to see any of these genny manufacturers give details and specs and pictures of the internal parts.

view the posts on field lines. you will find many generator designs far superior to what you can buy and at a fraction of the cost of a manufactured unit.

as mentioned, Ed has some great kits now for sale if you are not up to building a unit from scratch.

why have a moped when you can have a cadilac.

maybe it was 3 cents worth  

have fun

zubbly

[wiredwrong]

"why have a moped when you can have a cadilac"

Gas Prices....

[PHinker]

30 mph sustained winds are pretty rare.  With a swept area of just 5 ft in diameter, you need a real good site to produce consistent, usable power with a turbine of that size.  With a Hugh P. or Dan B. model in the 12 ft range, you could see that same 800 watts in winds just half a strong (i.e. 16-17 mph) which are considerably less rare.

I also see from their site that they think a 20 or 30 turbine wind farm would be acceptible to neighbors ... From what I understand, those hornet blades sound about like their namesake.  Can you imagine the sound 30 of those would make in a 20 mph wind?  Yikes!

Paul

[zubbly]

LOL!  

[nothing to lose]

I kinda like the way they do the figures myself actaully.

Figuring my last genny build, I could get it rated maybe 500watts!!

Well ya ok, how many tornados does the average person have per year? But hey when they do get one  mine would be a 500watt system too!!!

If the blades held up in 150mph winds of course

Kinda like another system I saw advertised somewhere, rated about 800watts but fine print says in 45-50 mile winds, or was that 60-65mph winds? Ha ha ha

Well at least that company did have the fine print available.

[stm]

Hello Zubbly

Last year, I was looking at the rutland wind generators from marlec enginering in england and when I told them that I was going to england on a business trip, they offered me that I could get a tour at the factory and see how they were manufacturing their products.

The nice thing was, that I was not interested in becoming a reseller or something like that - I just wanted to purchase one of their smallest wind-generators for my boat, and therefore I needed some information about the protection from seawater on the internal parts of the windmill.

This is one of the major differences between large corporations and smaller (<50 employees) businesses.

/Steffen

[Vernon]

The best way to regulate would be the use of a useful load, like a hot water heater, ot absorb unneeded power. Assuming you start from discharged batteries the wind turbine would initially act as a current source in charging the batteries, as the battery approached full charge a shunt regulator, an electronically controlled load inside the HW heater, would function to maintain the voltage at 14.2V (for a 12 volt system). Refinements to this concept are possible, if a 250 gallon hot water heater is full of cold water and winds are high it might be advantageous to disconect from the battery and allow the alternator to generate at the optimum power transfer voltage into heater elements that are adjusted to achieve that operating point. I assume that the voltages in the graph are max power transfer voltages .. and would be about half the open circuit voltage at that wind speed. Internal impedance of the machine would change with speed since a large component of that impedance is the syncronous reactance of the rotor and, of course, inductive reactance increases with frequency. Matching the load impedance to the internal impedance will produce max power under a given thevinin equivalent circuit, in addition to this one has to consider the torque of the blades under in a given wind. The only way you can realize the power in the graph would be to have a computerized control set a load resistance that is optimum for the wind speed.  

[Vernon]

Correction ... I meant (of course) synchronous reactance of the stator !

I looked around that website and they do not yet have power curves for that series of alternator. The voltage given could be open circuit voltage, in which case it should be loaded to produce half the voltage indicated for the wind speed if maximum power is to be obtained.

I was thinking that it might be good to use a 120V battery and a step up converter. That would generate at any RPM and be driven acording to the available power at the existing wind speed. An inductor and a diode would be placed in series with the alternator output and a computer switched "PWM" FET connected between the inductor - diode junction and ground. The transistor is turned on and the inductor is charged for a period of time. The energy at that point is 1/2 LI^2 joules. That energy is discharged into the load, rising automatically to the necessary voltage when the transistor cuts off. The duty cycle, frequency and alternator output voltage control the power delivered to the load and that is regulated to be equal to the mechanical power at the measured wind speed. Excess energy causes a high voltage condition and that is corrected by energising elements of the hot water heater. This kind of scheme is capable of using all the available power ... regardless of wind speed.

[number42]

Yep, I've got one of these on the Essex coast in England. Lots of strong winds--today 25-30 mph and the output of the rebranded hornet/mallard/bee/whatever is typically 2-5 amps into a moderately discharged battery (12.65 volts under charge) with some peaks to 10 amps. Figure about 60 watts tops. What does the literature that came with the genny say it should be producing? 400 watts! Tops out at around 1000 watts in higher winds it claims. Like what? 500, maybe 600 mph?

Been testing it over the past month at various wind levels and various states of battery charge. It's a no runner, at least for the rated specs. If you're looking for a 100 watt genny then it's just the ticket!

Sort of a disappointment on our eco-cabin. I'll try different blades and eventually just bolt the PMA to my Lister diesel and use it for a back up charger. Bet I can get 1,000 watts out of it then.

Cheers from the end of the universe.

[schillin]

Dear Sir

Have you had any better luck with your Mallard?  After reading all of the disappointment with Mallard on this forum, I now wish I hadnt bought one.  I'm new to wind energy, and purchased one from mikeswindmill.com.  It doesn't turn at low wind speeds.  I'm in Michigan....havent had high enough winds to test the machine as yet.  We had one windy day, when the rotor was spinning very quickly.  We havent hooked it up to a battery, we simply connected the leads to a 60 watt incandescent light bulb (a store bought bulb for 110 volts AC).   The bulb became warm but never glowed.  I've since changed to a 12 Volt DC 55 Watt automotive fog light.  I'm waiting for the wind to pick up before I see whether the genny produces light with this small bulb.

Calm day in Michigan