Stator and flywheel from Kohler used as generator?

[Roadhse2]

Not sure if anyone has tried this, but could a stator and flywheel from a larger lawn tractor engine (10hp or so) be used to build a windgen?  Would additional magnets in the flywheel produce more power. If this would work, is there any advantage to using the cast iron flywheel over an aluminum one for better flywheel effect to smooth out gusty wind conditions?

Thanks for any info.....i was just sitting around tonight thinking what i could build out of some junk engines i have in the shop.... windgen came to mind.

Glen

[Roadhse2]

By the way..i did do a search on this on here and found little...

I was looking for why it wont work or what would need to be changed to make it work, only real reference i found was to a VAWT, and it was more sidetracked into why a VAWT wont work than the stator and flywheel itself....i planned on a HAWT setup. Figured if brake drums and discs were being used..why not a flywheel and stator?

Thanks, Glen

[Norm]

Hook one of your engines up to an car alternator it could charge a battery at a
fast idle.....not as noisy as an engine running a 110 volt alternator.
Use battery to run an emergency inverter.
Norm.

[tanner0441]

Hi

What speed does your little engine run at to start charging? Because that is the speed the turbine has got to be turning at to get any output from the setup.

From my own experience with car alternators wind turbines just don't spin fast enough to make engine driven generators viable.  As stated by norm engine generators are best run by engines. Also engine driven generators are not designed to run 24 hours a day, they run very fast for a short time then spend lots of time just sitting doing nothing and the bearings reflect that type of use.

Brian.

[Flux]

You can probably get something out of one of those flywheel generators just to say that it works but you will never make a useful wind turbine out of it.

They have to run far too fast to start producing anything and that probably means a very fast 4ft prop in a near gale to reach cut in at 12v. They cog so your fast prop will need near a gale to start and finally they are designed to reactance limit to keep the charge within reason on the engine and that is far from what you need for wind power.

If you only want to run a few leds then it may be perfectly suitable but for real power production forget it, it's wasted effort. After all the electricity even on the engine is a small by product, just enough to charge a starter battery and it is only a few 10s of watts at 3000 rpm.

Flux