I felt like making an update, because I've added and finished off quite a few things, but haven't mentioned them before:
http://www.sparweb.ca/Diary/Baldor+8footer_Installed3.jpgThis is my "Baldor" motor conversion installed on the tower, and the blades on. The blades are only 8 feet so a little under-sized for the load of this motor/generator. I deal with this with switches I show below. I pulled an extra bundle wires through the tower, so now I have 6 power wires and two strands of Cat-3 phone cord for electronics. No actual electronics up there yet...
The old turbine control box had become very crammed, and I found a much larger enclosure for my stuff. A new much more tidy layout was possible.
http://www.sparweb.ca/6_Power/Wiring/Control_Box_s.jpg
http://www.sparweb.ca/6_Power/Wiring/Control_Box_inside_s.jpgThe rectifiers and bridges are on the left side, the 6 turbine wires come in the conduit on the left (I left a coil of wire at the bottom because I suspect I will want to move the control box location sometime). Then it's all connections and bus-bars to keep stuff organized. To make sense of it all I have a schematic, too:
http://www.sparweb.ca/6_Power/Wiring/System_2010Oct.gifUpdating this diagram I realized how much it's changed - sometimes I think "wow". You can see that there's a new charge controller in there. The Tristar TS-60 required a little learning curve - mostly getting used to the difference with the C40, not because they are incompatible or it's hard to use. The two play together nicely, now that I have the settings just right.
The solar panels went up in February (it was warm last February, go figure) and they have proven to be the BIGGEST improvement for the summer / fall seasons. There has been very little wind aside from storms for 4-5 months between May and Sept and the solar have topped up the batteries every single day. Not that the power gets used much at all in the summer. But they're definitely in fine condition for the heavier use this coming winter. Winds are coming back so the turbine is starting to pull its own weight.
Now I did mention that the 8-foot blades are mis-matched to the generator. I put in a Star-Jerry switch to get around that. Most of the time I leave it in Star, which cuts-in at about 160 RPM, but the blades just can't get the speed up so they wallow about in stall. So I rigged up this switch, see... With 6 wires in the tower I can switch to JERRY and rectify the phases separately. The cut-in speed for that is over 300 RPM but the power curve is very steep. So when it's windy and the blades are kinda ticking away in Star, I flip the Jerry switch! They immediately accelerate, and suddenly the ammeter jumps up over 10 amps. It's a lot of fun watching the ammeter jump when I flip. Look at the schematic diagram if you want to see how it works.
I don't leave the thing in Jerry because the cogging and start-up torque seems higher, so when the wind stops it simply won't start again until the next storm blows in. In Star it's a bit easier for the 8-foot blades to get started (but they certainly aren't right) so there are opportunities to get power in lighter winds. There is some slow progress on making a set of larger blades to better suit the generator. But the past few months have been busy with many other projects so there are three glued blanks of cedar just waiting to go under the knife...
