Pushing ahead on wind turbine
This is sort of a mishmash of images, but it pretty well represents what we are doing these last few days
Glen Hurd http://ghurd.info sent us one of his diversion load controllers last year and we are just now building it. Unfortunately we are having some difficulties with it, possibly because I tried to use a variable autotransformer and a rectifier to supply varying DC voltage to it at first and we think it was hard on the P-Fet. The first N-Fet was switching when we adjusted the potentiometer as it is supposed to, but the next stage of the circuit a P-Fet isn't changing states. Glen is helping and we bought two more of these kits from him on Friday. It is our intention to use one controller to run a 3 double throw three pole contactor which is like a relay (24 VDC coil) as an auxiliary shunting kill switch foe our 10 foot axial flux horizontal 24 volt wind turbine. The other two controllers will be for dump loads, to discharge storage batteries when nearing fully charged.
After brushing up on electronics skills long unused and scouring the various out-buildings for test equipment and tools we set up a bread board to try different things in our trouble shooting the controller.
Above is the variable transformer controlling the power input to a power supply with outputs of 10, 18, 48 VAC plus two 16 VDC outputs on the back, handy little supply I built back in the days of my service shop Outland Tech.
Above Ghurd's diversion load controller, before we unsoldered and resoldered components. It ain't too pretty no more.
Ah, the work bench at one stage before it got really crazy with all the added test gear.
We took a break from electronics to work on the tower. We are co0nstantly working on the anchor and base foundation holes, in between the snow, the cold and a constant 30 mile an hour wind which reminds us to be humble in the face of nature.
Above is one of the many inventions we are coming up with to solve problems as we build our first tower. Constantly reminded by the howling wind outside that everything we design will soon be put to a grueling test The adapter above will slide down inside the 3 inch square tubing which the first 40 feet of tower are made from. This bushing will be welded to a ten foot long two inch diameter schedule 40 steel pipe. Another bushing which is three times thicker will be closer to the top and welded in place near the guy cable hooks. These bushings are mainly to keep the round pipe from flopping around inside the square tubing.
We actually made the bushings before making the bracket that holds the hinging tower base because we are almost out of 1/4 thick steel and we needed to make sure we had enough.
In the background of the above image you can see our Granberg Alaskan chainsaw mill which we just used last weekend to cut two 3 inch thick 20 inch wide and 12 foot long slabs which will be the next workbench in our new shop.
Finally, today, April 4th 2009 we built the brackets for the tower base hinging system. The triangles fit around the 3 inch square tubing of the tower and 20 foot gin pole. The square bracket on the right is one of two which we will be welding 5/8 inch rebar which is buried in the foundation. Tomorrow if it doesn't come a Spring blizzard we set the tabs in place in the foundation holes and measure the rebar and mark each piece for a custom fit. We borrowed a builders level, which is sort of like a surveyors transit to get the anchors and the base all exactly the same height.
Kevin uses the portable band saw to cut out the 1/2 thick tower bushing. Handy tool that bandsaw, especially now that we bought the proper blade for it (more teeth per inch)
And finally, we are trying to figure out why our turbine doesn't come to a complete stop when we shunt the three phases of coils together. Everything is sloppy so the air gap seems too wide. today we pulled it apart and removed the washers we had to install between the outer rotor to get it to not rub on the stator. We installed washers that are 1/3 as thick and put it all back together, but with the ten foot blade system we can still move the turbine.
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