my first wind turbine

[para t8]

i have a  question,its about batt.can you run your house with 10'machine straght without batt.maybe a dumb questoin.can someone tell me without lol                       para t8

[johnlm]

What are you going to do for electricity when the wind is not blowing?

Johnlm

[para t8]

good question,no wind no power,but can you do it?

[dinges]

Whether he can is not the question; whether you can is.

Technically it's possibly, depending on your goals/aims with the windmill. Many things are technically possible, it's just that us humans don't want things just because they're 'technically possible', but because they work, provide comfort, or someway else help us live our lives.

You decide whether you can live with the fact that you'll only have (wind generated) electricity when it's windy. If the answer is 'yes', go for it. However, my goals are different, and I like to be able to have a little light when in the middle of the night I have to go to the toilet and it's not windy (or at least, not the kind of wind you need for electricity ;-) )

Off-topic:

while reading the title, I was thinking: why do I often see stories starting 'my first generator' and not 'my last generator'? Building windgenerators might be addictive? Once you pop you can't stop...

Peter,

The Netherlands.

[wildbill hickup]

There is also a problem with to much wind. Part of the reason for batteries is to regulate( at least to some extent) voltage. Take a simple lightbulb lets say 12 volt, gust of wind comes along and pumps 60+v from the genny, light gets real brite and poof out it goes never to work again. That's just a simple lightbulb, it's alot easier to blow more expencive electronics. You have to have some way to regulate the power coming from your wind generator as wind is never constant. That being said, if your intent is to do something like heating water with an electrical element then the answer is yes. When the wind blows hard you get hot water when it doesn't you'll have to put up with a cold shower. There are other reasons but these are just a few of the basics.

Wildbill

[dinges]

A valid point.

However, there are electronic solutions to this, so you could still run your windmill in high winds without blowing bulbs or other things.

You still need a dumpload, even if you go without batteries, to prevent overspeeding. So you will at least need some electronics.

In your case, you will also need electronics to prevent overvoltage.

You won't need the electronics to charge the battery; you won't have the costs/caring of batteries.

However, batteries provide a very simple & safe (even cheap?) voltage regulation function, apart from their capacity of providing energy during times when there's wind.

All in all, I can't think of a reason for me to go without batteries (only for electric heating maybe; but think that's a waste of perfectly good energy, unless as a dumpload).

The fact that 99% (?) of RE people use batteries should make you wonder whether you can do without them. As has been said, you can perhaps do without if your needs are very different from the average RE'er. Up to you to figure out. The majority however is against you (and you're already in a minority group, for wanting windenergy (1), building your own genny (minority within the wind community) and (3) go without batteries :-)

You aren't by any chance a debile homosexual jewish negro with a hunchback? (as my history teacher used as example for a REAL minority). :-)

Peter,

The Netherlands.

[niffa]

You can just use a grid connected system with your 10'gen. Cost a bit but the lights stay on if no wind.

cheers

[johnlm]

Some reasonably good discussion on this pretty vague question.  And the discussion did not even broach the topic of how much power he uses in the "house".  If you have a typical house that is on the grid now and uses maybe 500 to 1000 KWHours of power a month, you won't even come close to meeting your needs with a 10 ft windmill, unless you live in an area where the wind blows 35 mph 24hr a day even if you had batteries.  If you want good answers to your questions then give enough info so that people can give a reasonable answer.  

Johnlm

[richhagen]

Hmm, in the conventional sense of powering a house without some form of energy storage, or a grid connection, my answer would be no because you would only be able to operate things when the wind is blowing.  Your loads would have to match your turbine.  In fact, they always would one way or another.  You could run LED lights and such with a relay, or several, switching to a heating element when you get higher wind to hold the voltage down.  Of course when the wind dies down, your lights go out.  Most off the shelf electronic devices would be out because most consumer type devices would not handle the variable voltage that would be inherent to such a system.  

I am not aware of anyone who uses such a system, other than perhaps a few test turbines tied to unnecessary lights or loads for fun or experimentation.  The only use for larger turbines of this connection that I am aware of that makes sense to me is for heat, like the one Hugh built, I forget the name of it, but it was a large turbine he built just to supplement heating at a location.  I saw a nice page for it on his site www.scoraigwind.com some time back.  Another use might be water pumping if you rigged the pump to be powered when the supply voltage was sufficient.  

While besides heat, you possibly could build a system without batteries or some similar method of storing the energy, why would you?  In general, batteries arn't that expensive when you consider the versatility they add to a system.  It is nice to throw a switch and have the lights turn on, or turn on the computer, and not be worried about whether the wind is blowing or the sun is shining on your panels.  Besides, virtually all inverters for stand alone systems that I am aware of are designed to work with batteries.  

Have fun with it, no matter what you build.  Rich Hagen

[Flux]

All that I can add is that you could do it with a suitable voltage regulator as others have said, but remember that at any moment you can't use more than the mill can produce.

For a 10ft machine this could be as low as a few 10's of watts on light wind days and will rarely be consistently be above a few hundred watts on a good wind day. Every time demand exceeds supply you will stall and you will need a form of low volt cut out or you will have to keep disconnecting to start the blades.

If you don't want long term storage I still think you would need a small battery to make it work reasonably.

Flux

[para t8]

im going with batt.i was going to use batt. anyway, i just wanted to know if it could done.ive herd of it being done,but it will be cheaper and plus you can reg.your power.     anyone have any extra mag.wire out there?lol                      para t8

[para t8]

from my batt.bank to my tower im going to use #6wire,from the ground up three strands of #8.is there a reducer in there somewhere,ive been reading alot about wind and the energy you can get from it,but is there a fuseable link or can you just solder all in one?         para t8

[Gary D]

para, do you mean to go from 3 wires (up the tower) to 2 wires to your battery bank? If so, you will need to use your rectifiers to change the 3 phase ac. to dc. before the 2 wire changeover(at the bottom of the tower). If I misunderstand, my apologies. Gary D.

[para t8]

you are right i need the retifier to change the curent and i should have some

kind of fuse breaker.thanks for the imfo garyd         para t8