5Kw or 30KW?

[midwoud1]

Frank.
That looks professional . I see a passive pitchcontrol springloaded system .(with  flyweights? ) .
What is your blade span ?
How much output power ?
What kind of material you make your blades ?
Do you use a yaw motor ?
Generator like WHISPER  and AWP.

- Frans -

[Frank S]

Frans Easy enough to additionally add an active pitch limiter pushing from the end where the spring is located not connected to it just with a thrust bearing touching the pug plate that way in high surges the passive would act Independently.
 once I determine how powerful the magnetic field would be I will then figure out gauge & turns of wire needed to achieve  250 to 600 OCV  and at what RPM I I could expect for cut in @ 3 to5 ms. this would tell me how large the turbine would need to be
 the blades will most likely be mold cast composite resin& fiberglass over a layered core of aluminum & wood  with foam to fill the contour voids.
 As large as it will be it will have to have a powered yaw system
 it would also be very easy to separate the  rotor housing from the blade hub and design a step up planetary gear drive
 there is also the possibility that I might elect to go with thinner wire and more turns for higher OCV.  wire it for 9 phase then use 3  3 phase preferably auto transformers to get my 3 phase output of 415V AC 50 HZ Controllers and transformers, wiring or blades for the thing have not entered the picture fully just yet.
 in the next few months I hope to find 4 identical older Chrysler 50 amp Alts  I will keep one stock as a control cut the diodes out of the other 3 wire 1 for 3 phase & cut into the winding's to wire the 3rd as 9 phase and the 4th rewound with finer wire also for 9 or 3 phase I will then spin each up to 2000 RPM  play with the excitation voltage until over saturation  the rotor and take my readings
 this is about the only way I know of to down scale what I want to build even though there will be huge differences between the Lundale claw rotor and the 20 pole Neo one . I know where ther are several old small induction furnaces in a scrap yard that I can rob the coils to make a load bank out of.

[Frank S]

Franz a couple of updates on  my drawings
 shown in the following is both the active and the passive  pitch controls
with the active in the full retracted position the the passive controls the full function of the blades
 in higher wind speeds  the  active deploys accordingly to a signal sent from the anemometer still allowing the passive to control gusting.
 When the active is fully deployed the blades would be at full 90 degrees
 the yaw would be controlled a wind vane sensor this would have a variable sensitivity and delays to prevent random rotating of the generator during unstable or very low winds mostly when the wind speed would be very low







a system similar to this could be incorporated pretty easy to an axial flux home-brew machine
or if someone wanted to use a re designed delco it would have to be chain gear of belt driven to offset the generator from the center-line shaft.

[Frank S]

A few more pics

[Frank S]

Last for now

slot size

The stator is currently drawn at 360mm diameter 180 mm core length
 slotted for 42 coils 84 slots slot  openings are 5mm r x16.5mm x 5mm r

 rotor has 40 magnet  bars 1/2" x 1" x 7"
 Cooling fan stator

[fabricator]

Looks like about a $15K machine to me, there is a lot of machine work there and a LOT of windings.

[Frank S]

Looks like about a $15K machine to me, there is a lot of machine work there and a LOT of windings.

one thing is for sure if I decide to build it after I get through playing around with the design  is it not an average home brew type of machine. I have about every machine at my disposal to use in building it except for a laser torch for my CNC burn table to cut the laminate plates my plasma would not be suitable , too much clean up and the water-jet in our marble cutting workshop is too slow and I doubt if it can still hold close enough tolerances 10 years old too many tons of stone has been cut on it.

[Janne]

Hi,

I'm new to this thread, but why go all the trouble of building your own iron core for the generator? Big induction motors can be usually had for the price of scrap metal, which should give you plenty of core to play with.

[Frank S]

Hi,

I'm new to this thread, but why go all the trouble of building your own iron core for the generator? Big induction motors can be usually had for the price of scrap metal, which should give you plenty of core to play with.

Size shape and configuration would be the first 3 I do have an alt design in the works that uses  an internal rotor and uses  say a 324T or a 364T or even a 404T nema frame size the only thing that would be used in either case would be the external stator this saves the trouble of making the iron core however not without its trad off in order to get a 40 pole magnet set it would most likely require the 404T frame size of course nothing wrong with that there would be plenty of room for a horrendous amount of copper.
 Another alternative is I used to know where there were several scrapped out 60 KW 400HZ gen heads that had been used as airport one of these could probably be configured with an external excitation source turned at 225 rpm to produce about 7.5 KW  415V @ 50hz  No Neos needed just a rewind and rewire
 I could scale up the friction drive  have been designing turn it into a HAWT control to have a more or less constant rpm generator with both active and passive pitch control strap a set of 25 ft long blades to the unit on a 120 ft tower made out of 48 inch pipe and sit back and watch tv or something.
 As long as I am in design phase I have dozens of routes that I can look at
the drawings posted incorporate 40 poles of 1/2" by 1" neos in bars adding up to 7inches in length
 the slots will hold 50 to 56 turns of 2mm diameter wire about 90 feet each coil spanning 6 slots and 42 coils or around 3780 feet of wire  not sure of what the coil to slot span needs to be just yet there are 84 cavities

[Frank S]

here are a couple of flanged end bells we just finished up

50 HP

35HP

50 hp 35 GPM hyd pump on a 80 gal tank with a 5 hp 2.5GPM stand by

[fabricator]

Jeez, who ground the welds down on the tank?

[Frank S]

Jeez, who ground the welds down on the tank?

Fab if you have ever had to use unskilled Indian labor you wouldn't have to ask that one, the tank is welded from the inside then they  will grind at it I have tried for10 years to teach them  to use 36 grit soft disc to  sand not grind   to no avail
so I just make sure that I personally do a diesel leak test,  then let the painters have to deal with it with with a bit of body putty before priming

[fabricator]

Are those units for shipping back here or for sale overseas?

[Frank S]

No they are used on my elevators over here that one will be running a 10 ft by 20 ft platform  30 ft of rise in 20 seconds soft start up and decelerated at stop really could have been a 25 hp  unit but when you have stupid costumers you give them what they think they want as long as it is not under sized.

 this one was bought by a company working with the US military in Afghanistan



 to power this a 90 ft long post tension bridge beam form

[midwoud1]

Hi Frank , how are you ?

About active pitchcontrol . I found out to check Rpms on the mainshaft is the best.
Can be done with a simple elecronic circuit on 1 phase of your generator output instead of anemometer sensing.  A tachochip LM 2917 connected with the Arduino micro-controller.
With the software all Rpms can be programmed. Sensing every 3 seconds.
What ever you want.
I have very good results , quick response feather and unfeather propeller.
Never high-temp stator and high voltage on the battery bank. In my situation 24volt 230Ah.
No inverter shutdown . Nice if you are working with a PC.

Regards Frans.

[Frank S]

   (Remember all of this is still purely speculative at this stage)
 OK thanks to reading many threads here in these forums and others for over a year I have pretty much settled on the design for my small generator of roughly 3KW it will be a home brew Axial based on Chris O's Fabricator's and Frans's 3 meter class turbines 15 coils 2 x 20 magnets geared up 1to 5 with a combination of mine and Frans's active / passive pitch control designs. I'm not concerned with the blades all that much since many years past I have helped make blades for competition air boats and after reading one of Hugh Piggott's books and seeing how 100s of blades are made those are just a matter of a lot of mind numbing labor unless I decide to buy or build a CNC router which is an option since I have other planned projects one of these could be used for Or I might simply hire them made. Something I rarely do for anything except for hiring a technician or laborer to help me.
   For controllers such as   Mppt and inverters will be determined when I decide on how much storage and solar I will have or need a lot will depend on if I am able to get grid in the area where I will be moving to or not If there is, or will be grid this is all moot since this will become little more than hobby experimentation or coupled with a stand by generator for back up in the advent of grid loss There will be no grid tie considered.
   For my strictly experimental large turbine which may be used to power my shop  should it work out I've narrowed my design down to a 90 coil 120 magnet radial 39 “ diameter at the separation point between the magnets and the coil cores 7 inches thick  using 1”x1” by 7” magnets  and “T” shaped core laminations  I'm estimating  150 turns of 15ga per coil  with 30 coils per phase if connected in series  that would be  4500 turns if connected 3 by 10 series parallel then it would be3 x 1500 turns 5x6 would be 900 turns  6x5 = 750 or 10x3 = 450 or finally 30x1=150. The higher turn count would mean much higher VOC @ lower amps the lower turn count configuration would be lower VOC with higher amps. One way has a higher susceptibility to total voltage loss with a shorted coil the other extreme is least susceptible to coil shorting. The transformer required to turn this into useable voltage suffers at both ends of the scale as well   I am targeting for 60 RPM for the rotor controlling the RPMs with the pitch controller  fine tuning the output voltage with a linear variable transformer  moving the core VIA the pitch controller as well  since this will be a 3 ph  line voltage output it will need a transformer for each leg .
 Due to the limited amount of magnet area I don't expect the output current will be anywhere near that of  a wound rotor could be  and I don't care since I have a Turkish made  30 KW  gen set with a 4 cylinder Perkins
 None of this can be made until I relocate because my home workshop is too small to do much more than a small amount of the machining and everythi9ng I was to build would just take up more space and weight for shipping

[CraigM]

Frank,

At the bottom of the "T" shaped laminations, what is the through hole used for? Doesn't the lamination material need to be connected from "T" to "T" at the bottom of the T to provide a closed path for the flux to travel? Thought maybe you had something else in mind to close the flux path or loop.

Thanks, CM

[ChrisOlson]

I have pretty much settled on the design for my small generator of roughly 3KW it will be a home brew Axial based on Chris O's Fabricator's and Frans's 3 meter class turbines 15 coils 2 x 20 magnets geared up 1to 5 with a combination of mine and Frans's active / passive pitch control designs.

What sort of voltages are you looking at running with this 20 pole axial running at 5x rotor speed?  You're going to get ungodly voltages from such a thing.  The advantage of using gearing is to use a smaller generator will less poles and the highest gear ratio I would recommend for a 3.5 meter class machine is around .4:1, or 2.5x overdrive with a 12 pole generator.  At .2:1 a 3 meter rotor is going to "lag" quite a bit getting generator mass up to speed.
--
Chris

[fabricator]

Mine is 4:1, it hasn't flown yet but I suspect without mppt it would never see it's real capability, unless I used a version of Frans's variable pitch.

[Frank S]

I have pretty much settled on the design for my small generator of roughly 3KW it will be a home brew Axial based on Chris O's Fabricator's and Frans's 3 meter class turbines 15 coils 2 x 20 magnets geared up 1to 5 with a combination of mine and Frans's active / passive pitch control designs.

What sort of voltages are you looking at running with this 20 pole axial running at 5x rotor speed?  You're going to get ungodly voltages from such a thing.  The advantage of using gearing is to use a smaller generator will less poles and the highest gear ratio I would recommend for a 3.5 meter class machine is around .4:1, or 2.5x overdrive with a 12 pole generator.  At .2:1 a 3 meter rotor is going to "lag" quite a bit getting generator mass up to speed.
--
Chris

Chris this is a classic example of my needing to re read my posts as many as 3 or 4 times before I post them that was supposed to say  possibly geared up 1 to 1.5  striving towards 130 to 140 VOC which unless I am way off should net in the neighborhood of  60 to 70 volts under load this might mean over 105 to 120v between the phases if so I could possibly have to reverse gear it down in order to rectify it and connect it to a charge controller & inverter. However if it were feasible or possible to make stable line voltage without the need to go through the bank first I would.
 I would almost consider going to the higher torque output of a drag fan instead of lift turbine but controlling the RPMs in those to anything stable is extremely complicated. If I were to start thinking about that route I might as well mount a hand full of 4 pole 1000 or 1500 watt St heads on a 1 to 100 ratio and try to keep them spinning at a proper RPM or go one step further and use the newer technology inverter  generators like your Honda has. But all of that is rubbish thinking anyway for the small one it will be a close copy of what you guys have been building for years using the good points from 3 or 4  designs and what ever the output is will be what it will be 
 for the experimental radial I am thinking it could possibly have as much as 4000 VOC depending on the configuration but that is what transformers are for and it will not be tower mounted butengine powered until it is fully worked out it copuld require a $100,000.00 tower & turbine for all I know if so it will probably become a 800 pound pile of copper& steel

 Craig M the hole in the T core is to hold them into the sockets of the steel mounting

[ChrisOlson]

Mine is 4:1, it hasn't flown yet but I suspect without mppt it would never see it's real capability, unless I used a version of Frans's variable pitch.

With the .25:1 and a 3.5-4.0 meter rotor, the more I think about it I think I'd use a GOE222 blade set on that so it has the torque to get up to speed.  A 12 foot blade set would be about ideal on that.
--
Chris

[Frank S]

Chris with  15 coils and 40 magnets wound like I have in mind I may have to go even up to  15 to 18 ft diameter but I was planning on not using neo magnets if that helps you to determine my thinking

[Frank S]

If I could build one that could directly produce line voltage @ 60HZ completely mechanically controlled with Zero electronics even at the expense of 25% or more of the overall efficiency, I would heck I still prefer points in an engine's ignition or the old Cummins PT pumps

[midwoud1]

Twenty years ago I made a big mistake.
I made a 2 blader prop with passive variable centrifugal pitchcontrol.
It was spinning in storm with full revs .
The system did start very good in low wind,but it ran high in wind and did not go slower.
Suddenly one blade was lost and flew over two houses.
It sticked in the garden of grandma neighbour on a place where she has walked around one hour before.
I decided that must never ever happen again.
That was also a reason to make active pitchcontrol with solid blade fixation.
Professional industrial mills lost also blades but that is no excuse.

[fabricator]

If I could build one that could directly produce line voltage @ 60HZ completely mechanically controlled with Zero electronics even at the expense of 25% or more of the overall efficiency, I would heck I still prefer points in an engine's ignition or the old Cummins PT pumps

My 4:1 will make 120vac at about 200 rpms.

[ChrisOlson]

My 4:1 will make 120vac at about 200 rpms.

Yeah, I guess I was thinking it hit 30 volts @ 100 rpm.  So at 300 rpm it would be 90 volts.  120 VAC @ 200 is worse yet.  That's 168 VDC @ 200 rpm.  That can't be right.  How'd we come up with them numbers?  You'd better double check that.
--
Chris

[ChrisOlson]

Chris with  15 coils and 40 magnets wound like I have in mind I may have to go even up to  15 to 18 ft diameter but I was planning on not using neo magnets if that helps you to determine my thinking

Well, yeah.  If you're going to use ferrite blocks, then she' gotta spin fast.
--
Chris

[Frank S]

That was why I was thinking it will need a gear up with the 3 meter swept area I doubt even with its size that it would produce much over 2500 watts but I am probably wrong
 The wife says if we wind up off grid then she will use up to 4 grand of her money in solar if I buy the bank and everything else it takes She thinks solar cells are in her words pretty she likes to see the different colors they make when the sun shines on them  LOL

[ChrisOlson]

That's right.  Women like stuff that looks pretty.

Men like women that look pretty, but otherwise they like stuff that goes around real fast and might blow up.
--
Chris

[ChrisOlson]

Suddenly one blade was lost and flew over two houses.

Frans, that's even worse than the turbine I had a few years ago that had the stator burn up, then it tossed all the magnets off it, then the blades hit the tower and got busted.  I found most of the magnets but there's still rare earth deposits in the field in back of our house because I never found 'em all.   
--
Chris

[Frank S]

Chris I sometimes scratch that I suffer from the Tim Allen syndrome if big & fast is good then bigger& faster is better but Biggest is just plain scary darn fun even if it blows up Me and a couple of friends spent nearly 4 months income each only to watch it explode in 6.035 seconds after we found out that Dave was still alive and not hurt we laughed so hard the track officials thought we had lost our minds in a way we had for trying to shove that much nitro-us into that engine anyway He did win though LOL   

[Frank S]

Sorry it was 7.035 seconds

[fabricator]

My 4:1 will make 120vac at about 200 rpms.

Yeah, I guess I was thinking it hit 30 volts @ 100 rpm.  So at 300 rpm it would be 90 volts.  120 VAC @ 200 is worse yet.  That's 168 VDC @ 200 rpm.  That can't be right.  How'd we come up with them numbers?  You'd better double check that.
--
Chris

Damned if I know, I never write stuff down, I'll have to check it again.