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My 17' Turbine so far

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Boss:
Oh BTW where are you located, generally

SparWeb:
Hi Nekit.  Isn't it great to see it come alive!

Your 2nd video catches some funny noises and I bet you're curious about that.
Two things:  Is there any play in the yaw mount / can rock it slightly on the tower stub?  If so then vibrations from various sources can resonate with this freedom of motion.  It's not fatal and not even likely to be a problem, but you may see some wear on parts after a few years.  Since you have a rather complex mounting system, I would be concerned about other parts being loose (tail hinge).  It looks like your tower is a jiffy to lower so this might be easy to inspect.  Considering how thoroughly everything's been done on your system, I rather doubt anything was missed.

The other thing is the electrical start-up conditions in the electrical system.  Since you've got an Aurora I don't know if this is 100% applicable.  Mine makes the same noise at cut-in speed and it seems to be caused by rapidly opening and closing the rectifiers.  Let me tell you about why (I believe) it makes noise on my system, and you tell me if that is relevant on an Aurora grid-tie.  The AC voltage increases with speed, and at cut-in, only the peaks are high enough to open the diodes.  So you get very short "ON" periods where the diodes let current flow on any given phase briefly.  The momentary ON is a higher load (torque) than the intervening times before the next phase voltage rises enough to switch ON.  These torque pulses cause a similar growling noise.  On mine, I find it is louder in Star than when phases are individually rectified, but the noise is there just the same.  Only at cut-in. 

Hope that helps!

nekit:

--- Quote from: SparWeb on July 03, 2011, 05:48:40 PM ---Hi Nekit.  Isn't it great to see it come alive!

Your 2nd video catches some funny noises and I bet you're curious about that.
Two things:  Is there any play in the yaw mount / can rock it slightly on the tower stub?  If so then vibrations from various sources can resonate with this freedom of motion.  It's not fatal and not even likely to be a problem, but you may see some wear on parts after a few years.  Since you have a rather complex mounting system, I would be concerned about other parts being loose (tail hinge).  It looks like your tower is a jiffy to lower so this might be easy to inspect.  Considering how thoroughly everything's been done on your system, I rather doubt anything was missed.

The other thing is the electrical start-up conditions in the electrical system.  Since you've got an Aurora I don't know if this is 100% applicable.  Mine makes the same noise at cut-in speed and it seems to be caused by rapidly opening and closing the rectifiers.  Let me tell you about why (I believe) it makes noise on my system, and you tell me if that is relevant on an Aurora grid-tie.  The AC voltage increases with speed, and at cut-in, only the peaks are high enough to open the diodes.  So you get very short "ON" periods where the diodes let current flow on any given phase briefly.  The momentary ON is a higher load (torque) than the intervening times before the next phase voltage rises enough to switch ON.  These torque pulses cause a similar growling noise.  On mine, I find it is louder in Star than when phases are individually rectified, but the noise is there just the same.  Only at cut-in. 

Hope that helps!



--- End quote ---

Thanks for the info.  I think your on track with the noise issue, but I think it's the aluminium cover that I made that goes over the slip rings.  I'm going to bring it down and add some rubber and some other tweaks.

As for the startup, that makes sense.  I'll have to watch it and see if that's the case over time.

Thanks

halfcrazy:
My neighbors 17 ft machine was doing the same growling noise at cut in on the Classic. We bumped the first two steps of the power curve up a few volts and that made it cut in a little later maybe 1mph? This basically eliminated the growl. We where originally trying to cut in around 4-4.5 mph I think that may just be to low now it is closer to 6 mph.  I have talked to people that have had issues with towers resonating at a certain power output say 1000 watts and they did the same thing with the Aurora inverter they tuned around that spot by making one step a little high and letting the turbine free up a bit there.

nekit:
Here's the power curve I am currently using.  This was compiled with the help of Rob Becker's info and some math crunching on my own.  Seems to be working ok so far, but winds have been pretty low since my turbine went up.  Time will tell.
Wind mph   Wind (m/s)   Watts Rotor   RPM   Hz      Unloaded AC   I Phase   Loaded AC   P Loss   P Out   Eff     DC Volts MPPT   Watts Out MPPT

4.48   2.0   30   44   5.9   58   0.3   57   0   30   99%   75    0
5.6   2.5   59   55   7.4   72   0.5   71   1   58   99%   93   30
6.72   3.0   102   66   8.9   86   0.7   85   2   101   98%   111   81
7.84   3.5   163   77   10.3   101   0.9   99   3   159   98%   129   151
8.96   4.0   243   89   11.8   115   1.2   113   5   237   98%   147   245
10.08   4.5   346   100   13.3   129   1.5   126   9   337   98%   165   365
11.2   5.0   474   111   14.8   144   1.9   140   13   461   97%   183   513
13.44   6.0   819   133   17.7   173   2.7   167   27   792   97%   219   911
15.68   7.0   1301   155   20.7   201   3.7   194   50   1251   96%   254   1461
17.92   8.0   1942   177   23.6   230   4.9   220   86   1856   96%   288   2188
20.16   9.0   2765   199   26.6   259   6.2   246   137   2628   95%   322   3114
22.4   10.0   3793   221   29.5   288   7.6   272   209   3584   94%   356   4261
24.64   11.0   5049   243   32.5   316   9.2   297   306   4743   94%   389   5651
25.536   11.4   5620   252   33.6   328   9.9   307   353   5267   94%   403   6280

Sorry Chart gets a little messed up when posted.

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