low Amp output

[freejuice]

Hi Folks,
 My 11 footer is putting out low amps, and I'm thinking it might be too much resistance...but as I have claimed before I'm far from an electrical guru.

Here's what I have:

It's the 11 footer, 24v with the odd-ball 65 turns I have mentioned before, it has the 11.375 rotors which slighlty crowds the magnets based on the standard 10 foot design.
 When the wind is really pushing the alternator into a furl, I get about 4 amps..maybe 5 amps at the best ( unless my amp meter at  the rectifier/heatsink box is lying to me). The blades appear to be running well, in low wind, high wind which might indicate to me it might be too much line resistance( unless I'm looking at this "bassackwards".

I'm thinking this problem is in two possible areas:
1. the alternator needs more turns, which I actually have another stator on standby ready to install the moment I have enough time to lower the tower.

2. It could be in my power cable going to the battery bank; Heres the details:  It's about 150 feet away from the tower base. From the alternator to the tower base, it is a 10-3 SO cord. From the tower base to the rectifier/battery bank, each leg or phase is ran thru 3 strands of 12 gage awg wire, for a total of nine wires. Each strand is about .080 thousandths in diameter, I was hoping to mimic a 4 gauge wire which is about .204 thousandths in diameter.

Easch strand is of the same type and of the same length. At the battery bank/rectifier box , I keep my runs as short as possible, and everything after the rectifier is hooked up with either 10 gauge wire or 8 gauge wire.
 
Any ideas? I hope I didnt leave any information out.
 Thanks,
 Gavin

[wpowokal]

Gavin is your amp meter in the AC or Dc side?

allan

[Flux]

4A at furling with 11ft at 24v is miserable.

A few possibilities,  Ammeter not reading right, furling below 20 mph, prop screaming it's head off or stalled just above cut in.

First check cut in. Measure open circuit dc volts in cut in speed wind 7 to 8 mph. it should be in the 24v region.

If this is in the right order then see what the blades are doing at just below furling, should be approaching double the cut in speed and fairly quiet.

If not much above cut in speed and very quiet then you are most likely stalled. if they are fast and noisy and with a hint of flutter than the speed is way too high and you have too much resistance somewhere,

If you are not in the very fast and noisy state then briefly open circuit the dc at just below furling, if it flies away and goes fast and furious then you are probably stalled badly. Try adding another 12v car battery in series and it should come to life. if so open air gap or add line resistance.

Be careful opening the circuit, don't do it at the battery where sparks may ignite gas and don't hold the leads with bare hands you may get upwards of 100v.

By judging the speed on and off load you should be able to sort stall from runaway.

Check the ammeter and the tricky bit will be knowing wind speed.

Flux

[freejuice]

Hi Allen,
 Its after the rectifier...  its a 10 gage wire it only travels a few more inches (12 inches or so) until it it clamped underneath the terminal screws which also clamps the battery cables.

I bought it off of Ebay here is the actual meter:
http://cgi.ebay.com/50-AMP-PANEL-METER-DC-direct-analog-FREE-SHIPPING-/120452038866?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_210&hash=item1c0b8040d2

 Scroll through it, it shows how to hook it up etc....what do you think?

Flux, it will run at least 300-400 rpms easily, right before cut in you will start hearing the blades make a little noise, but I'm thinking it's the tracking...I think I have one blade slightly off.

However, it can hit four amps at about cut-in, or slighlty above it,  but when you start hearing the blades pouring it on, say in a 20 mile an hour wind the amp meter acts like it hits a rock solid wall at 4 amps, but the blades keep turning like nothing can slow them down. But the amps will never climb any higher.
 At the rectifier, it will measure the 24 volts in a 7-8 mile an hour wind, (without being hooked up to the batteries)
 Yet with the batteries hooked back up the blades at double cutin are not quite, due to the fact my tracking might be off on one blade...I guess I need to get the tracking straighted out first.

 I have heard the fluttering sound before, its usually somewhere after cutin, but it will not always happen after cutin in, it appears to happen when the wind changes direction, and the blades will slow for a moment while making what I would call an "F" sound...as if you were saying "fffffffff", then start tracking again and speed right back up.
 Now this whole rig is only attached to only 4, 6volt golf cart batteris at the moment.
 Thanks,
 Gavin

[Flux]

This may sound a little silly but it has all the symptoms of an ammeter sticking at 4A.

Your cut in is ok and you obviously are not stalled. Even with very excessive resistance in line the current would still rise if the prop speed keeps rising.

If you have a digital voltmeter clip it across the ammeter terminals and set it on dc mV. the volts you measure will be directly related to current with full scale on the analogue meter being probably 75mv but the figure doesn't matter. When the analogue stops rising see if the mV still go up.

Flux

[freejuice]

Hi Flux,
 Thanks for the quick response, as soon as the wind picks up I will run the meter across the amp meter. Hopefully these attached photos will work out, tell me if you see something amiss here???
 Here's the setup inside my panel box (with  the door open)
 Above is the 60 amp rectifier
 Bottom left is my shorting switch.
 and Bottom right is the amp meter.
However here's the rub as I understand things:
 The amp meter should be hooked up to the negative terminal, however I had to flip the wires around coming from the rectifier to the amp meter, the reason so, is becasue the amp meter was reading backwards when I had it hooked up to the negative side, in other words the needle wanted to fall towards zero amps instead of rising when the wind picked up. So I ran the amp meter through the positive terminal coming from ther rectifier, thus you see the positive terminal from the rectifier on the white wire





 From here you can see the three ac wires coming in from the turbine, going to the rectifier ( White Green and Black)
 In this picture you might not see the black and white wires from  DC rectifier until they enter at the bottom of the two 35 amp fuses....the two larger green cables are my battery terminals.
 Off to the right of the box, you can see the wire( nine12 ga wires are actually here) entering from the turbine( three of these wires feed one leg of the AC side of the rectifier...to keep the clutter down I used a wire nut on three 12 gage wires....connecting them to one black 6 gage wire....all three ac Legs were done in this fashion




In this Photo you can see the whole "shabang"

[dnix71]

Output will vary according to the load, which in your case is a set of 4 6v golf cart batteries. If the output voltage of the mill isn't much higher than the batteries then there won't be much current flow.

A dc ammeter fed clipped wild three phase probably won't read correctly either. A high voltage electrolytic filtering cap across the back of the dc meter would smooth out the ripple and give truer readings.

You could also try a hand held multimeter in line near the batteries. Watch for sparks when you do it so you don't blow up your batteries.

[freejuice]

Hi dnix71
 Forgive my lack of knowledge on the electrical side of things, but  if I use a multimeter on the batteries, are you saying to flip it over to DC amps and take on lead from the multi meter and place it on the battery post and the other on the DC cable. if so, positive or negative?
 Oh, I might use a short piece of battery cable, to clamp the multimeter to so as to avoid a potential spark and a hydrogen kaboom.

[joestue]

Output will vary according to the load, which in your case is a set of 4 6v golf cart batteries. If the output voltage of the mill isn't much higher than the batteries then there won't be much current flow.

A dc ammeter fed clipped wild three phase probably won't read correctly either. A high voltage electrolytic filtering cap across the back of the dc meter would smooth out the ripple and give truer readings.

You could also try a hand held multimeter in line near the batteries. Watch for sparks when you do it so you don't blow up your batteries.

It should be accurate to -10,+0%, as those meters measure average current. You can assume that the current is continuous if the turbine is putting out more than 110% battery voltage.

First thing to do is measure the voltages across everything, including the amp meter, which should only drop millivolts.

[freejuice]

This may sound a little silly but it has all the symptoms of an ammeter sticking at 4A.

Flux, There is nothing silly about what you said! You nailed it!
 The turbine makes a little noise at charging voltage....around 26 volts, that's when the amps start pushing in this region.

A few minutes ago I remembered I had an old Western Auto battery charger around here from the mid 1970's. I had almost forgotten about it. Well the old analog DC amp meter only reads about 8 amps total, but I took it out and hooked it up bypassing the amp meter in the photos, just to satisfy the process of elimination....well when the wind picked up, I heard the blades ever so slightly at charging voltage, and as the wind increased the needle quickly shot off that tiny 8 amp chart.

Now I need to get a decent amp meter!

 Hey mods can we have Flux renamed as "Resident Otherpower Wind Generator Analyst PhD, summa cum Laude"

 

[ghurd]

For like $5 and some romex, can make a new meter.
http://fieldlines.com/board/index.php/topic,133114.msg871158.html#msg871158


Flux's insight, answers, and patience, caused Admin to manually create a new rating.
"Super Hero Member Plus", which has 7 Stars.
Nobody else has 7 Stars!

[TomW]

For like $5 and some romex, can make a new meter.
http://fieldlines.com/board/index.php/topic,133114.msg871158.html#msg871158


Flux's insight, answers, and patience, caused Admin to manually create a new rating.
"Super Hero Member Plus", which has 7 Stars.
Nobody else has 7 Stars!

You are in the same group (over 4,000 posts). But. You are a moderator so you default to 5 Blue stars. It is purely based on post count.

Sorry for the topic drift.

Tom

[freejuice]

Hi Ghurd,
 The meter I have in the panel box is a shunted meter, or is suppose to be one.. well... it least was advertised as so. However, if I look at the fella's ebay site it shows him testing one but it appears it hardly gets over 4 amps...my same situation...now what kind of current he was running through it...I dont know..it's a Youtube video weithout much info.
 Do you think I need to shunt the meter with the directions you provided? It was advertised as a shunted meter...its no pain on my end to do so, any ideas on this situation?
 Thanks,
 Gavin

[ghurd]

If it does not have an internal shunt, then a few dozen milliamps will 'peg it'.
It is easy to tell if it has an internal shunt by the needle NOT spiking to max lightly loaded.
G-

[Flux]

I suspect it is as advertised with an internal shunt. You were just unlucky and if you contact the supplier he ought to change it.

These type meters have a delicate coil moving very close to the poles of a strong magnet and controlled by two little hairsprings. Sometimes a little steel particle gets in the magnet gap and stops the coil moving past it. if the thing has been dropped in transit it may have moved the coil off centre. These things happen with analogue meters, muck sometimes gets in especially if the glass has come loose.

If he won't change it you may be able to strip it and remove the bit of muck that is causing the trouble but it takes a fair bit of skill to do it without damage. You will probably be limited to removing little bits of steel with a needle or pushing them out of the way with a small diameter copper wire.

Flux

[chazsql]

When connecting the amp meter to the shunt, is there a minimal wire size?  Excuse me if I missed that information.  I've not gotten much wind since installing my meter, so, If I need to make readjustments, now would be a good time.

[chazsql]

Also, is there a right or wrong way to connect the shunt between the genny and the batteries?  My meter has a (-) sigh by one terminal and i assume that goes to the battery side of the shunt.

[ghurd]

Chazsql,
Very little amperage flows through the meter itself.  Most flows through the shunt.
The wire connecting the meter to the shunt can be quite small.

I would not suggest telephone wire, but #20 or larger would be fine.

The (-) is where the amps 'go out' of the meter and shunt.

Assuming the meter is in the + wire, and the + is toward the turbine, then the meter's (-) is toward the battery +.

If you are measuring a load, then the meter + is toward the battery plus, and the meter (-) is toward the load +.
G-