Newbie Questions

[Murphy625]

Hi All,
I'm new to this and have a few simple questions.

First question: I have a Reliance Electric Tachometer Generator that makes 103 volts at 2500 RPM.  (1 volt / 24 rpm).
I hooked it up to a 12 volt light bulb and used my cordless drill to get it going and it seems to work good.  Volt meter showed good dc volts that climbed as I went faster.

Found a tach-generator like I have on ebay here: Ebay Item Number 281116085008

Can I use this as my generator for a small wind turbine?   I'm just looking to charge a 12 volt battery on my chicken coop that powers an automatic door opener and maybe some LED lights.

Second question:  When I'm looking at charge controllers, I'm seeing all kinds of output ratings but almost no input ratings.   If the wind gets going and my DC motor starts producing 30 to 50 volts, will that not damage my 12 volt battery and/or the charge controller? 

Thanks!

[Bruce S]

For better answers we'll need a little more info.
When you hooked up the drill at what speed (RPM) did it start to light the light?
What was the volts as well?
These are important, as they will determine whether or not it'll be a good candidate for wind.
High speeds can be hard to obtain depending on the setup and style of blades.
You'll need about 14Vdc so taking the 1V/24RPM info that's about 340RPMs, while not that hard to obtain can be depending on again the blades and the site you are looking to use, plus the average wind speeds for that site are very important.

While the light bulb is a good quick way to see if it'll possible work , we'd also need to know what the wattage of the bulb is, standard for a 1156 single car bulb is about 55watts.

Hope this helps
Bruce S   

[Flux]

Tacho generators are normally intended only to drive instrumentation. A few large industrial units were actually large enough to deliver a bit of power but they are large ( about the size of a 1/4 Hp motor).

Even then due to the fairly high top end voltage you could only expect to take an amp or so continuously. Unless this is a big industrial unit , 100s of mA is more likely its intended current limit.

I seriously doubt that it would produce enough to warrent any form of charge control.

Flux

[Murphy625]

Tacho generators are normally intended only to drive instrumentation. A few large industrial units were actually large enough to deliver a bit of power but they are large ( about the size of a 1/4 Hp motor).

Even then due to the fairly high top end voltage you could only expect to take an amp or so continuously. Unless this is a big industrial unit , 100s of mA is more likely its intended current limit.

I seriously doubt that it would produce enough to warrent any form of charge control.

Flux

What the heck?  I replied to this post, saw my reply, then 2 hours later its completely gone??

Thank you for the info.. I found the specs on the generator and you are correct in that it will only generate a hundred millivolts or so.     

[Bruce S]

Tacho generators are normally intended only to drive instrumentation. A few large industrial units were actually large enough to deliver a bit of power but they are large ( about the size of a 1/4 Hp motor).

Even then due to the fairly high top end voltage you could only expect to take an amp or so continuously. Unless this is a big industrial unit , 100s of mA is more likely its intended current limit.

I seriously doubt that it would produce enough to warrent any form of charge control.

Flux

What the heck?  I replied to this post, saw my reply, then 2 hours later its completely gone??

Thank you for the info.. I found the specs on the generator and you are correct in that it will only generate a hundred millivolts or so.   

Not sure what happened to your other post, I'll go digging around in the Admin section.
Sometimes they get caught into the bit bucket if the system is doing a backup, though I've only seen that happen 2 other times in the past few years.