Hi Jerry -
"As far as the higher resistance and voltage/power losses. Some of the GURUs here on the board talk about doing just that to some gennys to compensate for a genny to load missmatch."
Yes, if the machine is such that resistance is so low that it stalls the blades then adding resistance downstream can improve performance a lot. Consider the extreme case - imagine a system with 0 resistance (an alternator wound with superconducting wire) - then it would take an infinite amount of torque to increase alternator rpm above cutin rpm - the blades could never speed up. On the other hand - if the alternator has infinite resistance then no power would be generated (or an infinitely small amount) and the blades would free spin. Somewhere between is the 'best' match for the blades and often times this involves adding resistance. My thinking with these machines lately is that it's wise to overbuild the alternator - you have to have resistance (heat) somewhere in the system, it makes sense to remove some of it from the stator I think. There have been a few burnouts lately in 10' machines we made. Some of these were not really the fault of the machine but rather the load it was hooked to. A couple recently were the fault of the machine - 10' machines on very good wind sites and the bottom line was simply too much heat in the stator. By using larger magnets - changing the coils a bit (fewer turns, heavier wire) I think we can lower resistance 50% without only a bit more cost in magnets. But - in order for those machines to run well in high winds we'll have to add resistance down stream.
"As far as star conection you've allready got some resistance and voltage loss built into the genny. Some feel more resistance is a good thing?"
Star -Delta -Jerry rigged doesnt even enter into it at all. Wound for the same cutin speed with the same magnets then each way would be about the same. Given the same magnet rotors - if I wound with Delta then it'd be lots more turns and thinner wire per coil. In the end, if cutin speed is the same, so would resistance be. It's not that 'more resistance is better' - its that we need the right amount.
Of course - with an electronic controller (some sort of PWM MPPT controller or something) then resistance could be extremely low and the controller would do the work of matching the blades to the load. That's not what most folks are doing though.
"You would think the higher resistance would alow the genny to spin up faster and compensate for some loss?"
Yes, in some cases if the alternator was built to produce more power at a given rpm than the blades can produce, adding resistance helps.