Small wind, PV and possibly Mico Hydro system.

[indalohousse]

Hello one and All,

My names Rob,  This is my first post, so please be gentle

So, here is the plan, Sell house in Rat race

                      Buy a couple of house's in Cornwall,

                      Live in one and have the other as holidaylet

                      develop own power and heating

 Now my house is for sale and has been for the last 3 months, the UK housing market has slowed to a snails pace, however my commitment to this plan is such that im treating this time as preparation, planning, proof of concept and gennerally obtaining as much stuff as possible for the forthcomming move.

I have been thinking about a diverse approach to energy and heat generation for some time,   so inkeeping with "not putting all your eggs in 1 basket" i think a couple of wind generators with PV(tracking)   and site allowing a micro hydro system are my goals as far as energy is concerned. ( am looking at a watermill!)

For heating im considering a whole bunch of flat plate collectors on an outbuilding for low level heat to be stored in a tank and used for underfloor heating and evac tubes for the hot water both or either supplimented with a wood stove and back boiler.

So  first  Windpower.

I have started the build of a pair of Small wind genny's using 40V Ametek

progress so far   i have the mill head built and the blades, i have 'obtained' a batterybank,  the Tail is hanging up drying

Here is the head close up:-

I have encapsulated the motor in a plastic pipe with silicone sealent

here are the batteries:-

Im hoping to 'obtain' a second bank in due course

I've ordered a couple of Dump controllers and have started fabricating the controller housing.  Still waiting on Arbors and Diodes     more later

I added your missing photos from the other Diary so folks don't have to look over there for them.

[andyman5002]

Its looking good, keep us all posted on your project

And more photos as you go please

Thanks Andy

[DamonHD]

Hmm, being a coward I would have all those metal tools hanging above the bare battery terminals, nor indeed rest a metal stepladder against them, but that's just me and battery-bank envy I guess!  B^>

Rgds

Damon

[spinningmagnets]

Hello, Rob! Where I live, I have no Hydro, the community doesn't allow wind-generators, and the wife doesn't want to add any solar because she fears it may reduce our homes appeal when we sell to retire.

We hope to purchase affordable retirement property near a resourceful city, but far enough away into the country that we're allowed to have wind/solar/hydro. I'm keen on micro-hydro, because  I already want a pond, and also want to grow half my food, so I'll want a site with water flow most of the year.

My wife wants a pre-existing home that is fairly conventional, but I plan on building a garage/shop to fiddle around in. My hobby will be gradually reducing my heating and electricity bill.

If your property has water flow, I would exploit the hydro fairly soon, to see how much you can get from it. Even a small amount is good, and it may determine the final size of the rest of your system.

One of my goals is to quickly get a small Diesel engine (perhaps from a car) to spin a "Zubbly" motor conversion on a trailer. A small amount of adaptation will allow it to run on either Diesel or free waste vegetable oil from restaurants. I can run it once a week to top off a future battery pack, run heavy loads like laundry or welding, and provide back-up power when the grid is down.

Next, I plan to add some wind-gens to keep the battery pack topped off, as much as is possible. (I'd build one now like you, if it were allowed here)

Cheap fertile land with water will probably mean snow in the winter and lots of cloudy days, so I don't anticipate getting solar PV. If I was staying here in sunny Utah, it would be my first choice, though I do plan on using as much solar heat in the shop as I can get.

You may find some very useful info at www.builditsolar.com

Gary has a great solar shop plan, that warms an underground water tank, that feeds radiant floor heat to the house. Fairly easy to gradually add in bits and pieces.

Regardless of your home heat source, the German "passive house" standard will significantly reduce the size requirement and fuel consumption of your heating system if you live in a cloudy area. Im a big fan of passive solar heat collection (even in fairly cloudy areas), but the wife wants a fairly normal looking home.

I'm just doing my homework now, and you are far ahead of me! Please keep everyone posted, any info you can provide will be very helpful. -RonR in SoUtah

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

Encapsulating the motor in plastic is a great way to cook it.  It will drastically reduce the amount of power you can generate without overheating it.

You should leave it as exposed as possible - painting or covering only those things that would otherwise rust/corrode or let water into a place it shouldn't go.

[indalohousse]

Ahh thanks for that   i had not really considered the heat output of the motor as being a problem,   generally speaking in the UK if the wind is blowing its normally cold  or raining in the summer its hot but never really wthat windy   i plan to test fly this whilst i await the sale of my house  i have some trick temp monitoring kit whereby i can take readings every 1 min or so and its presented as a graph    and i run this over IP on the house network   a single ip gives me 2 temp readings or power if i change sensor type  

See graphs below taken from the input and output of my passive air heating system from today    the sensors are the size of a transistor and can be glued on

I will add one of these and a rpm sensor and see how it fairs   if it starts to cook i will rethink its weatherproofing    thanks for the heads up

[indalohousse]

Ok I have been away for work but today i managed a bit more progress,

the head now has a tail

I salvaged 3 large UPS units that i have started to dismantle for parts so i decided to start on the monitoring unit, this is designed to monitor the incomming voltage of 2 sources with the displays switchable, have individual windmill shutdown switches and a current monitor, I have just completed mounting the components for one of G Hurds dump load controllers and i think this will house a pair of those,   so with that in mind  here is the empty (before) enclosure i managed to salvage

Here is the front panel with the meters mounted and a test voltage of 9.7 volts going into a 50ohm load

and here is a quick look at the guts of the box,  i have yet to wire the windmill stop switches in  and the load  will be part of my dump load  but im using it here just to test the panel.  Everything here is all salvage aside from the meters which were off ebay    the big UPS's have a wealth of parts  including the nice dump loads

still alot of wiring to do and an enclosure for the dump loads   im focusing on building it in halfs at pres    also may swop out the bridge i have installed for a nice chunky 40A diode as the bridge on the input drops nearly a volt    

Just got notification that my Rotors and Arbors are in customs and will be with me next week,  bought about 30 foot of 4 core tri rated cable about 8mm section per pair    from a local scrap yard   and whilst there i bought an ally A-con blower unit that looks perfect to turn into a micro hydro wheel      photos of that next time!    

[alibro]

I bought one of those meters off ebay too but I find it jumps around quite a bit (Volts reading wanders by up to 1volt). Can you give more info on them and how you find them.

Cheers

Alibro