Wind turbine at Menards

[12AX7]

It this has already been posted,  please feel free to delete this.

Ran across this and thought others might want to look at it.


http://www.menards.com/main/outdoor/alternative-energy/wind/600-watt-wind-turbine/p-1509033-c-6293.htm

[spottrouble]

And country of origin is? Yes I know the Coleman name, its not the company it used to be.

Kristi

[Mary B]

If it actually puts out the claimed power in the curve in the manual not bad.

[ChrisOlson]

If it actually puts out the claimed power in the curve in the manual not bad.

They don't.  It's a SunForce.  I installed a turbine in Canada where a guy had one of those on a 85 foot tower.  It takes 12 mph wind to even get it turn, and in 20 mph wind it barely makes .1 kWh/day.

One of those ornamental Dutch windmills is a much better investment.
--
Chris

[fabricator]

They are made in China, they been selling them for a couple years, there was a box that was conveniently open once when I was there, they are basically a delco only smaller, less copper, less magnets.
They also have nasty lookin blades with a trailing edge that is about 1/8 wide and flat.
Notice the shipping weight is like 31 pounds, that is the entire machine with the charge controller, how much of that do you thnk is copper and magnets in the alternator? Probably less than a pound of each.

[bob g]

31 lbs??  pfffftttttt,    roflmao! 

good grief!

really?

pretty bad when this is better marketed in a cracker jacks box!

bob g

[fabricator]

The toys in crackerjack boxes were more fun and usually not a total disappointment.

[ChrisOlson]

The one the guy in Canada had was a SunForce 600 unit, which makes these for Coleman.  It got up to 5 amps once, he said, which was about 130 watts, when a storm went thru.  He said it spent the vast majority of the six months he had it on the tower not even running.

He had bought it thru Amazon and tried to get his money back for it because it didn't work.  He never got his money back for it and still has it.  He has tried to give it away and nobody wants it.

We put one of my 3.8 meter turbines on that same tower and it has only stopped running a couple times that he knows of in over a year.  It has made him an average of 6.8 kWh/day since it went up, and typically generates more power in one afternoon than the Sunforce turbine did in 6 months.

There is no substitute for a real wind turbine.
--
Chris

[electrondady1]

perhaps it would be better suited for a tidal power installation 

[Frank S]

perhaps it would be better suited for a tidal power installation 

 At 31 lbs it wouldn't even make  good boat anchor

[fabricator]

31 pounds of cast aluminum aint even worth a trip to the scrapper.

[bob g]

its really sad, that with companies like solindra and amonix going defunct with products that weren't viable from the start, now the very in your face vertical mills at the olympics,  along with the 31lb wonder(if it works)turbine from menards and many others will all do nothing but sour the public further when it comes to AE/RE products and projects.

after a while it all looks like vodoo pseudo science to the average person that might one day have otherwise been interested in spending money on such things.

with the NREL having sold out in support of the amonix fiasco, along with magazines like mother earth news and homepower promoting anyone and anything that produces advertizing dollars, where in the hell does the uninformed get good, solid, unbiased information?

the answer?  there is none!

we will lose another 30 years before AE/RE gets any credibility back as far as the general public is concerned.

i remember back in the early 90's when computer monitor wars were raging, making claims of screen size out to the maximum size of the crt glass... that finally got resolved and standards were set... too bad there is no interest in setting standards that are closely monitored and policed by some group that is unaffiliated to any manufacture, supplier or political group.

bob g

[fabricator]

Mother Earth News and Home Power, those are two mags that I used to wait at the mail box for, today I wouldn't even waste the energy to spit on em, they should be listed somewhere in the definition of "sell out" in the dictionary.

[ChrisOlson]

If Home Power would use a different type of paper they could fill a market niche for RE themed a$$ wipe packaged in booklet form instead of on a roll.  But as it stands at present it is not even suitable for that application.
--
Chris

[fabricator]

It used to be so damned good, from large to small installations, even installations of home built stuff! With beautiful schematics of the installations, now it's all very high end professionally installed turn key stuff, some would argue they are just going where the market is going, BS, they sold out lock stock and barrel.

[Frank S]

There is nothing particularly wrong with turn key stuff. providing what is represented, sold &  installed actually preforms as advertised,
 When there are different levels of quality the consumer should at least be entitled to knowing the expected output for a given environment even when they do not know how or what information to ask for.
 If I am a consumer whether I am spending $1.00 or $1,000,000.00 and you are a producer or merchandiser , you should have the business ethics to treat me as if I will be your only customer ever, should I be wronged by your products, goods , or services.
 Because I can always go somewhere else. The same as my customers "WILL" go somewhere else if I fail to look out for them.
     

[go4it]

What about the charge controller?  Is there some merit to it and would it have a practical on a real turbine.