Light Weight Wind Turbine Project - as I build it.

[Steadfast]

I finally cut out the body of the tail...  Dude 1/4 inch aluminium is tough...  Cutting it out was like a career option!
And so the setting of the screws begins.


I like RED, don't you?


These are my aluminum Falcon blades, sanded and then painted with several layers of engine enamel with a layer of clear coat.
The yellow is a Bronze Metal Enamel, the white stripe is the raw aluminum under clear coat.
It was nice of the UPS Guy to show up and deliver my second 140 watt solar pannel, right when I needed some cardboard to paint on too.


Here is the body attached to the pivot.
It just sucks that I have to wait for my generator to be finished being custom built before I can set up the structure to mount it onto the pivot and mount up my blades. But THAT is life when you make the snap dicision NOT to use your Ametek at the last moment.



Here is the extent of my furelling radius...  I need to install my stops so the tail does not get munched by my blades.


And because I just could not stand looking at my blades seperate anymore...

[ChrisOlson]

So what's the deal with the blade tips being bent?

When you finally decide what size blades you are going for, work out the total area as if it was a solid disc, then find out the wind loading on the disc for a given wind speed. then multiply that by the length of unsupported pole and look how much it translates to on your support. Add to that the vibration and gyroscopic forces being transmitted down the pole........

--
Chris

[birdhouse]

great video chris....  exactly why a 1.5" or even 2" water pipe tower should be guyed in the CORRECT SPOTS!!!

someone could have actually died in that video had things worked out differently!

adam

[ChrisOlson]

Yeah, I know the guy that did that.  It wasn't good.

I just wanted to point out that a conglomeration of hose clamps is not going to hold no wind turbine.  And I highly doubt the support to the shed will hold it either.  If the wind blows during a storm it will just rip a piece of the shed off  - whatever you got it lag screwed to - and it will come down.

The tower in the video was way heavier duty than what I'm seeing in this thread and it came down because a guy wire let go.

So just a warning to anybody reading this thread and thinking you can "get by" with the type of tower being shown here - wind turbines, improperly constructed and placed on an inadequate tower, are dangerous.  Even little ones.  They are not toys.  If it comes down, or even pieces of it fall off and hit somebody, you're going to need a lot more than band-aides to patch 'em up, assuming they're still alive.
--
Chris

[fabricator]

Did that guy have that hinge on top of that conduit? Or was it bolted to his roof?

[midwoud1]

It looks if it has no furling tail.
The windspeed meter is still OK.
Guyline cable keys fixed the right way ?

  - F -

[fabricator]

It looks like the two closest to the camera are basically slack, they look like a complete disaster waiting to happen, the wait wasn't long.

[ChrisOlson]

Did that guy have that hinge on top of that conduit? Or was it bolted to his roof?

I don't remember all the details of that setup.  He had a lot of problems with that Chinese turbine.  First it burnt the slip rings out.  So he eliminated those.  Then it shook real bad so they replaced the blades on it.

The whole tower was a 2" pipe with another pipe inside it, but I don't remember if it was hinged at the roofline to let it down, or if it was hinged at the ground.  It think it was hinged at the roofline.

I checked out some things on these "Falcon" blades, as I had never seen these particular ones before.  I found out they come from a certain outfit that straps barn fan blades on car alternators, calls it a wind turbine, then applies an arbitrary power rating to it at 50 mph wind speed, or some other equally ridiculous thing.  I have had some discussions with these people in the past, and let's just say I wasn't all that impressed.

There is no TSR specs, no Cp, nothing on these blades.  They don't have an airfoil that creates any lift, that I can see.  They appear to be glorified versions of the famous "PVC blades" that we all know go around but don't make any serious power for their swept area.

Anyway, I found this particular video about them:

I would judge the wind speed at at least 10-12 mph looking at the foliage in the background.  And I'm talking at real wind power height at 30 feet above the treeline - not in the trees.  What I learned about watching this video is that, apparently, I have always had the wrong idea about wind turbines.  The important thing, it would appear, is that the thing goes around.  Making power is secondary.

I can only surmise that, based on the fact that this appears to be a pretty decent wind day in the video (if the guy had a real tower).  But when he shows you the "setup" the ammeter is laying on ZERO.  However, he's happy as a lark because that contraption on that pole is going around.  At least it did most of the time.  I noticed at one point it appeared to spin around like a top on the "tower" and stop, even with the wind still blowing good.

So, in conclusion, I'm going to have to re-think all my theories on wind power.  It would appear there's a way bigger market for yard art than there is for real wind turbines.  There is absolutely NOTHING in that video that I could recommend to anybody thinking about a wind power system, from the blades to the car alternator they're bolted to, to the tower, to the location.  And yet the guy in the video is tickled pink with it.   
--
Chris

[fabricator]

That is the same thing I thought immediately, 6mph my ass, he must have the anemometer mounted on the roof of that building, my guess was 10-15 mph, it would have been interesting to see if the ammeter came off the peg when that thing was doing about 3-400 rpms, my guess is NOT.

[ChrisOlson]

he must have the anemometer mounted on the roof of that building

Which is fine - your anemometer should be mounted so that it displays the wind speed your turbine "sees".  But if his anemometer was only showing 6 mph when there was obviously at least 10-15 mph available, then the turbine is installed wrong.
--
Chris

[JW]

the turbine is installed wrong.

I think its wise for members to make this comment

Here is the "Grabbing pole" with my wife's plans realized belt clamp.

One has to admit this is a pretty dubious construction/installation arragement. I dont see a way to defend it.

Hell, I was ready to draw up a braket in solidworks.

Also that guys(wires) are being refered to a superior to a braket to a building, is also most likely correct.

Its hard to defend the installation

[rain1224]

You have very clear plan and do a lot of work for it,you will success finally!

[Steadfast]

I am sorry that I could not post photos yesterday, but I was busy learning how difficult and time consuming working electricity really is...

I took Fab's advice and made this:


My shed is now solar and soon will be wind powered as well. Those are both 140 watt panels.


Here is my power board wired for solar:
The only thing I am waiting for is my turbine's MCA and this pane will also be wired for wind as well.


I see the light!


I then sliced open my sheds counter top... so I could make a hiding spot for my batteries.


You will notice that I left enough room to add 4 more batteries when I can afford them.

Outside power outlet shown of on right. 3 phase input power inlet for the future turbine, left, on the side of shed next to tower.

[Steadfast]

So what's the deal with the blade tips being bent?
--
Chris

The bend make these blades silent and causes them to not loose speed due to the vortex which causes all other aluminum blades to stall out. Also, the bend causes them to be extremely nimble and they respond to light winds quickly...

If you buy these blades make sure to include the bent portion to you total blade length

[ChrisOlson]

If you buy these blades make sure to include the bent portion to you total blade length

That's interesting.  So the bent portion of the tips actually adds to the swept area?
--
Chris

[midwoud1]

Nice painted blades . Sometimes you see bent tips on big windmills too.

 - F -

[Steadfast]

If you buy these blades make sure to include the bent portion to you total blade length

That's interesting.  So the bent portion of the tips actually adds to the swept area?
--
Chris

The bent portion is also pushing wind... so yes, it counts as length.

[midwoud1]

Steadfast. Keep your batteries in a ventilated place. Away from sparks of grinding and welding .  I had a big boooom  long time ago .

[tecker]

Alright your off the ground .  Watching all those factors come together is the stuff you can pass on . It gives that little dab of control back that being patched in to the umbilical assumes .Frees you  up and all that petty BS can get gone.

[fabricator]

Well I wouldn't go all flying off the handle here, I hate to be the cold water on the fire here but it remains to be seen whether that red painted car alternator will actually make AMPs at all AMPs charge batteries, a turbine doing 1000 rpms and making 14 volts and .005 amps aint gonna make kWh.

[Steadfast]

Hey, It is not on me.... 
If the alternator does not perform I will simply return it.
And the guy who makes them will look REALLY BAD...

BUT

If, the alternator works even close to how he described that it would,
His product will get a glowing review by me, here, on two other forums,
with Dan Fink (who has taken an interest in this project and whom I am in contact daily),
and on youtube as well.

The owner of the company KNOWS this too... because he is reading this very string...

So.... If my faith is not misplaced in this man's engineering abilities.
You guys will have some apologizing to make to Hurricane
for the trash talk you all have been making against the man's business and livelihood.
And
I will simply have a nice turbine that works in low wind conditions.
And trickle charges my shed each week.

So...as I said...I have nothing to lose, or prove, Nothing to “defend”…
The results will be what they are, and I will report them as they happen.

[Steadfast]

As for the falcon blades...  This is a video I like to refer too:
and  it is funny too. (most of the sound in the background is of vehicles on the road near his house)

[RP]

Ouch! 

[ChrisOlson]

A generator is a generator.  It has internal resistance which ultimately determines how much power it's going to produce and how much heat will be dissipated in the stator.

Example:  Lets say this thing has an internal resistance of .3 ohm and produces one volt for every 10 rpm.  At 500 rpm it will produce 50 open volts.  If the loaded voltage is 14.0, the generator will produce 120 amps, or 1,680 watts.  The stator will dissipate 4,320 watts, requiring shaft input power of 6 kW (8.04 bhp).  The generator is therefore 28% power efficient @ 1.68 kW output.

This is a typical efficiency for the majority of these generators that use Delco 10SI/12SI cores, rewound and refitted with a permanent magnet rotor.  They reach 50% efficiency somewhere around 60 amps output.

The above is all basic electrical engineering and ohm's law.  If they try to make claims that violate any of this, they are lying.  Period.

Of course the generator will work and produce power - the question is, does it match your blades?

You are using a five foot rotor for which no tested documentation is available.  The specs on the rotor are give by a guy who mounts them on shed roofs, says the wind is blowing at "x" mph and observes, "Look at 'em crank".

So I"ll have to resort to proven wind power engineering here.  And if the claims on the blades exceed this, they are lying.  Period.

Your five foot rotor at 10 mph wind speed at 1,100 ft elevation has 93 watts of kinetic energy flowing thru the swept area.  The rotor needs to be running at TSR 6, minimum, to capture 30% of that.  If it runs slower than TSR 6 the Cp drops off really fast.  If it's running at TSR 8 you can achieve efficiencies as high as 47%.

10 mph @ TSR 6 @ 5 foot diameter is 341 rpm.  At that speed @ 30% efficiency it will develop 28 watts of shaft power.  If the generator can operate at 90% efficiency at 341 rpm, you get 25 watts from your generator before losses in the line and rectifier.  25 watts @ 14.0 volts is 1.78 amps.

Since everybody is reading this "string", and you're in daily contact with Dan Fink, please run all these all these number by them and see if they tell you I don't know what I'm talking about.  If they do tell you that, I would like to talk to them personally.

Have you done the above math to match your blades to your generator to meet your expectations on power output?  Or are you just bolting stuff together based on blades "that really crank" and a generator with a bogus published curve, and hope it works?
--
Chris

[fabricator]

I'm pretty sure there won't be any apologizing going on here, because of what we've been trying to tell you through this whole thread, WE'VE SEEN IT BEFORE, many times. Physical laws as far as we know are the same throughout the known universe and they certainly are on this rock, that alternator can only physically hold just so much copper and so many many magnets.
Those alternators have been modded hundreds if not thousands of times, some guys have modest success but they sure as hell aint barn burners, I've been offering structural suggestions just in the hopes you don't kill an innocent bystander and I'm still pretty sure there is a good chance of that.
If that hub for those blades is aluminum because of the way it's made with three spokes the blades mount to instead of a disc, the spokes WILL work harden and it will inevitably, eventually start to shed blades, those blades will cause lots of mayhem when they come in contact with objects, God forbid soft fleshy objects.

[tanner0441]

Hi

I am still not impressed with the way the mast is attached to your shed. The new braces you have added are still fixed to the plank which looks to be attached to your shed with nails or screws, I would at least have another piece of wood or angle iron on the inside and bolted through at all the mast mountings, also that flange on the stub is screwed, screw threads on bits of pipe are stress multilpyers and are only designed to support the pipe under light tension or compressive loading.

As for the blades spinning up in light winds, my blades will start up in between 2 and 4 MPH but I don't get power below 12 MPH so I would not worry if they didn't start turning until 9 to 10 MPH as long as they are up to speed by 12.

Read and digest what Chris is saying about basic theory Volt times Amps is Watts, Watts times Hours is Watt/Hours, which is what you are looking for, as I said earlier I have seen my 200W unit putting out 480W but it was only for a few seconds, and it spends most of its life sitting just below cut in, and remember if your batteries are fully charged, your charge controller will (should) be dumping your power.

You are getting a lot of good advice, most of it from people who have had the bruises, and the cuts and scrapes, and the lucky escapes.  I was warned against holding a small turbine and pointing it into the wind, all I will say is I had a smack on the head with a 5ft length of 2 x 4 carved into a very crude blade.  Having said that I hope it works for you, you have put a lot of effort into what you've done.

Brian

[ChrisOlson]

Physical laws as far as we know are the same throughout the known universe and they certainly are on this rock, that alternator can only physically hold just so much copper and so many many magnets.

And the blades can only develop so much shaft power based on their swept area.  Bent tips don't do a confounded thing for "low wind performance" because there is no power in "low wind".

I would refer to Alton Moore's power tables:
http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/ndsu/klemen/Perfect_Turbine.htm

Your five foot turbine has a swept area of 19.63 ft².  At 6 mph wind speed a "Good Turbine" produces .3777 watts/sq ft, or 7.4 watts for a 5 footer.  And this is a "Good Turbine" where everything is perfectly matched between available shaft power, generator load and resistance.  Now, study the math in my previous post if you want to build a "Good Turbine".

You actually need blades that perform better than Cp .3 to have a "Good Turbine".  The blades have to be operating from Cp .35-.40 to achieve the "Good Turbine" numbers.

I will not comment further on this, as this has approached a dead end.  A newbie who refuses to acknowledge the basic facts and concepts of wind power will have to learn the hard way.  There is a big difference between having a turbine that merely goes around and makes a few watts vs one that efficiently extracts every available watt from your wind conditions.  And when you're dealing with a short tower in the trees, and small turbines, you cannot make the mistakes I'm trying to prevent you from making because even a "Good Turbine" is pretty darned marginal.

The guy that builds the generators can no doubt wind one to match virtually anything.  But when you're dealing with an unknown power source that has no published specs on TSR, Cp curve, etc., what you do you but make a wild stab in the dark?  I read the information from both the people who build the blades and the guy who builds the generators.  What is see is that the guy that pedals the blades bases their performance on "they really crank".  Well, 50 rpm @ 3 mph wind speed is only TSR 3 - far below what you need to achieve 30% efficiency.

I made this video for the heck of it to prove a point.  This is a 10.5 foot diameter rotor running at 150 rpm @ 5 mph, which is slightly over TSR 10.  When the turbine cuts in at 6 mph it produces a whopping 28 watts.

However, when it's REALLY cranking at over 25 mph it hits 2.5+ kW, and I will venture a guess it runs at higher rpm's at full power than them "Falcon" blades will ever achieve.


And it don't have blades with bent frickin' tips.  So I'm not overly impressed with people who pedal this stuff and make these bogus claims about "low wind power" and blades with bent tips and "they really crank" and on and on.

I have attempted, and failed, to point out the basics.  From here on I will observe.
--
Chris

[Steadfast]

Oh... I don't doubt the physics nor the advice for a second...
but you have been so busy telling me how much things wont work that you never bothered to give me viable options besides a 60 pound servo motor. (Which is a great suggestion but too heavy to work in my wind area.) So your bottom line suggestions have equaled "quit now" or "move somewhere where there is more wind and build a 10 or larger rig." Both not viable options.
And when I press forward with my only options I am called names and ridiculed as a dangerous idiot "Newby".  Nice...  very nice....

So can you guys come up with a unit that weighs less than 13 pounds, start producing 12 volts at 80 rpms and continues up exponentually from there, that I can buy for less than $250 or are just going to tell me how stupid I am again for trying to find one on my own.

[fabricator]

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y6/fabricator01/photobucket-36635-1333291804096.jpg60 pound servo motor. (Which is a great suggestion but too heavy to work in my wind area.)

I don't understand what you mean by that, do you think the weight of the generator has some effect on whether the wind can spin it?

[ghurd]

Oh... I don't doubt the physics nor the advice for a second...

Bending the tips does not change the physics.
That crap is a sales pitch that some people fall for.

So can you guys come up with a unit that weighs less than 13 pounds, start producing 12 volts at 80 rpms and continues up exponentually from there, that I can buy for less than $250 or are just going to tell me how stupid I am again for trying to find one on my own.

"a unit that weighs less than 13 pounds, start producing 12 volts at 80 rpms and continues up exponentually from there, that I can buy for less than $250"
OK.  You asked.
Yes.
I do.
Those requirements are not uncommon.
Those requirements are not a good idea, but they are not uncommon.

[ChrisOlson]

but you have been so busy telling me how much things wont work that you never bothered to give me viable options

I'm going to make a comment here because I don't like the attitude.  I am NOT going to provide you with viable options.  That's up to you to decide or design.  I am trying to provide you with the basics of why you cannot do this:

start producing 12 volts at 80 rpms and continues up exponentually from there

And you don't seem to get it.  I've told you repeatedly that you need rpm's.  You don't cut a five foot rotor in at 80 rpm.  You should be looking at minimum, 275.  And if the blades won't run at 275 rpm @ 6 mph then you got the wrong blades.  That's where I have to just give up and leave you continue on your merry way because as much as I've tried to explain this, and suggested that you start from square one and re-read the book on homebrew windpower (as well as buying Hugh Piggot's book and read that too), you still don't get it.

I only commented here in the first place because I hate to see a wind power newbie fail with their first wind power project.  Nobody has called you any "names".  You ARE a newbie to wind power.  You DID design a very dangerous tower that is not suitable for any type of wind turbine.  So you can get the pout off.  Everybody here, that has loads of experience doing this, has tried to point out why you shouldn't do this or should do that.  We don't do this for somebody who is new to wind power just to waste time.

You have some very twisted ideas about how a wind turbine works.  I don't know where they came from.  But you will learn that everything those of us who have the experience has told you is fact.  We have all tried to HELP you build a successful wind turbine by pointing out what you need to do and what you need to stay away from if you want to get some usable power from your wind turbine.

'nuff said.
--
Chris

[ghurd]

You have some very twisted ideas about how a wind turbine works.  I don't know where they came from. 

I bet a shiney new nickle they came from ebay sellers.
G-

[ChrisOlson]

I bet a shiney new nickle they came from ebay sellers.

That's another topic that can get me so pi$$ed off I can't see straight.  I have seen at least one of those ebay sellers that operates under at least a dozen different aliases on the internet, including two business aliases so he can push bogus claims without using his real name.  And he posts bogus videos on YouTube show how great his scam is, using them as replies to anybody who posts on there that actually gets pi$$ed off because they got "took" when they bought into his scam.

I won't name any names.  But, Glen, I'm sure you know who I'm talking about.
--
Chris