Hello!
I have a Indiana 24 (don't remember the amperage, volts and rpm, but the characteristics were similar to Ametek 30 (I measured once)) motor as a wind generator with wooden 55" diameter blades. So its basically a fun project.
I have no plans of charging batteries, but I am interested in creating heat from generated output of the wind turbine.
I have a question concerning the controller. I made a controller based on this
page with small modifications (4 levels, AND gate instead of OR gate etc).
Plan is below. So basically reference voltage is compared to voltage (which is divided by 4 by 4 3.3K resistors) from the generator. If voltage from generator exceeds some reference level, a LED is lit and relay is switched on.
If just using the controller, the relays click eratically (I guess because of the voltage from the generator is very unstable and it is not DC current(?)) and constantly very fast (I guess 10 times per second if generator creates any electricity).
Therefore I use a bridge rectifier (without bridge rectifier the first relay still clicks very fast) and two 47 uF capacitors to smoothen voltage from the generator.
It got better but still relays click too much and especially when voltage from the generator gets quite small (less than 0.1V) after been higher (first level is set to 2V-5V).
There is not much problem with relay clicking if voltage from generator diminishes from 15V to 3V (2nd level is 5V-10V and 3rd level is 10V-20V).
If I use higher capacitance capacitators (with bridge rectifier) then relays click more when voltage output from the generator stops (as it takes more time to empty the capacitors), but if I use capacitors with small capacitance (e.g. 2uF) then first relay clicks very fast all the time.
Therefore I ask how is it possible to make the relays click less. I do not know much about electronics and therefore detailed ideas are preferred.
Thank You!