building a Wind Mill for my Senior Design but totally lost

[zicker]

Hi everyone,

I stumbled onto this site the other day and I was really impressed with the amount of information on here. Anyways, my design group and I chose to build a simple wind generator for our EE Senior Design project, but after reading a bit on what goes into a wind mill, such as the alternator design, bearing type, building a tower and other things I'm not sure where to begin. Money is tight so a smaller design would be applicable.

 I know that I need to read up before I do any designing and if you guys can help point me in the right direction that would really helpful.

Edit: I would like to present a working windmill that can store electricity and power LEDs or some other electronic devices. I am required to find the efficiency of the wind mill and other statistics that I may be required to find. I don't have the full details of what's required of our project until I meet with a professor/mentor this week.

[Rover]

Now I remember what I didn't like about college, and I'm just a bio (long time ago)

First... fiirst what is the goal ? simply design? show a functional lab prototype ? functioning wind turbine in tunnel?, functioning turbine in real word?

This will help everyone else respond

[WindriderNM]

There are several ways to build one with little money and easily. The blades should be easy with the tools available at a university. A generator can be made by machining groves in the rotor of a motor and putting neo magnets in them. You could engineer  the angle and arrangement of the magnets to get the most power. There are some pretty  pictures of magnetic flux elsewere on this forum.

[zicker]

For parts, I'm more than likely going to have to go to a junk yard for the bearings and other parts. Also, Florida is mostly flat and doesn't have a lot of wind, besides the beach, so I'm not sure where I can mount the windmill to receive a reliable source of wind.

[WindriderNM]

you could on a car or truck to test it.

[zap]

zicker,
windstuffnow (Ed) used to be a regular here.  His site may be of interest to you if you haven't already seen it.  Lots of info and some products although I don't know if he still sells things.
http://www.windstuffnow.com/main/

[zicker]

zicker,
windstuffnow (Ed) used to be a regular here.  His site may be of interest to you if you haven't already seen it.  Lots of info and some products although I don't know if he still sells things.
http://www.windstuffnow.com/main/

cool stuff, I'm checking out the projects section. I don't know if it would be too much work to build my own alternator. I need to have this thing built by the end of April.

[Rover]

" need to have this thing built by the end of April."

Is certainly possible. I don't know how much off-the-shelf stuff you are allowed to (or want to ) use, but there are many ways to build a turbine. Re-purposing old motors, converting old motors , building your own axial , etc. You can most parts off the shelf,  or some , or none and build from scratch. Even the blades are available commercially.

You will also need to figure out what the end goal is, offgrid charging batteries? , on-grid through a grid tie inverter? combination of both?. I'd probably go the battery charging route, so you will also need to figure out battery bank size and voltage as these will also play a factor in the turbine design , blade design, and size of the unit.

 

[wooferhound]

You need to be very careful or you will get the disease . . .
Once you learn how to make your own power you will not be able to control yourself and all you will want to do is make More power. It can take over your life and we have not been able to find a cure for it.
It's an addiction . . .

[WindriderNM]

I'm a total junkie I started with 1 small mill on a 20 ft. tower which was the gateway drug that got me started on solar elect which led to the hard stuff, solar hot water, solar heat, solar oven, I am even getting into bio-diesel. I have drug my loved ones into this addiction with me. I have even gone so as putting another window in the house so I can watch the windmills turning
Unlike other addictions admitting you are an addict doesn't help.

[zicker]

I'm a total junkie I started with 1 small mill on a 20 ft. tower which was the gateway drug that got me started on solar elect which led to the hard stuff, solar hot water, solar heat, solar oven, I am even getting into bio-diesel. I have drug my loved ones into this addiction with me. I have even gone so as putting another window in the house so I can watch the windmills turning
Unlike other addictions admitting you are an addict doesn't help.

hahaha, sounds an ironic addiction, it makes power and saves money on your electric bill. I think I will design the system to charge a batter, most likely a car battery because they are common and probably cheaper. I still need to figure a few things out before I start designing. I am meeting with my professor tomorrow to talk about the project. I will hopefully have my desired output by then.

[Beaufort]

If you're an EE, I'd recommend buying one of the receipe books (either the Dan's on this site or Hugh Piggott) and choose the 4 dia model.  Don't try to re-invent all the mechanical/blade stuff because you'll get out in the weeds on matching the blades to the alternator unless you go with a combination that is known.  From an Engineering standpoint, you get power from the rotor so the variables are diameter, blade pitch/profile, and number of blades.  This needs to be matched to the alternator where the variables are number of magnets, number of coils, number of turns on the coils, size of the magnets, the wiring configuration (delta, star, IRP, etc.), and some other minor variables.  If you choose one of the wind turbines from the receipe books, you'll have all the variables and it will work quite well.

Now comes the part of your project, you can't just paint-by-numbers and call yourself an artist.  So I would recommend taking one of the variables and doing a DOE on changing some part of the design that you find the most interseting.  For an EE, that would probably involve the alternator or winding configuration.  You mentioned providing efficiency as a deliverable, so maybe you can just try hooking up the coils in different configurations (star, delta, IRP) and measuring the difference across the power curve.  Another project could involve designing a MPPT controller if you're into circuit design (research this very well here before you decide to go this route).  Yet another project would involve developing a theoretical model for the power output starting with Faraday.  There are certain unknowns as you sweep across the power curve where the theoretical output doesn't match actual, and you have to really get into electromagnetic stuff to understand it.  This would be a chance to refine the simplistic models we use to predict power for an axial flux machine based upon magnet area and number of turns.  We would all be interested in another data point on these machines and you'll get plenty of (mostly) helpful advice as long as you pose informed questions.  Good luck.

[SparWeb]

Beaufort has an excellent suggestion, and many members will be happy to help as your project progresses.
If you want to find Hugh Piggott's website it is at www.scoraigwind.com

I've done many run-up tests on my projects; changing variables and measuring the results was the central goal, and I found it extremely informative.  I had a specific purpose in mind on my project, and in your case this style of testing can be adapted to many other purposes.  You can scale it down for whatever size of machine you build.

Other ideas on building simple cheap wind turbines:

PVC tube blades.  By cutting a length of PVC tube about 3' long, then splitting it lengthwise to make a trough, you are half-way to having either two 3' long blades or four 1.5' long blades.  Size to suit.  Taper the ends from the root to the tips and you have a rough kind of wind turbine blade strong enough for a few months of testing.



This diagram should give you the idea - but I can't find the original drawing that somebody (Wooferhound? Zubbly?) drew up several years ago with dimensions and cut-lines on it.
My search for the original thread on these blades (2003 vintage) comes up as a broken link (maybe lost when the site moved its data to a new server). 

[TomW]

I couldn't find that post, either. I have a bunch of Zubblys' and Woofers' files on my ww.com account

I did find this photo from Zubbly [RIP]:



Wooferhound posted an actual layout once but I have literally thousands of photos on my account most with no descriptions so I can't find that diagram in there but it probably is there someplace.  :

Feel free to poke around and see what you can find over here:

http://pics.ww.com/v/TomW/FLRescues/

Tom

[ghurd]

http://www.fieldlines.com/board/index.php/topic,127759.html
The sketch is all I need.
G-

[SparWeb]

Thanks Ghurd!
That's the one.

[zicker]

I talked with my professor/mentor and he rechecked the idea of building a small scale windmill. He said that it would be a complicated project and that it was more of an mechanical engineers area. Also, he called it un-original and to think of something else that is unique and cool.

My group has decided to do another project, but I still want to build a windmill so I'll make one in my free time when I'm out of school. Sorry that I couldn't get the project moving, but I'll try again later down the road.

[Madscientist267]

 

That was anti-climactic.

That's ok, I still have plans of building one too; this looks like some good stuff right here to play with to get me (and anybody else) going in wind when little is understood about it.

The blades are my personal enigma, so this is most useful regardless! 

Steve