Unsuccessful wind turbine story

[066logger]

Good evening everyone! I’m here to post what at this point feels like a complete failure. Partly due to me being gullible and used to dealing with honest people and partly due to someone being willing to sell me what I asked for 🤦🏼‍♂️. A little back story on my system, started with solar and fla batteries. Decided to supplement the solar with wind to help my aging batteries make it though winter nights. Wish I had found this forum before I made the jump… would have saved me so many headaches and a pile of cash…

After the turbine debacle I found Wills videos on YouTube and with so much help from Filterguy here I ended up with 32 eve 280ah cells and 4 overkill bms’s for 1,120ah at 24v. Absolutely love the batteries, love the new updated system layout and all is well. I need more solar but that will come in the future. Those are more straightforward.

Now comes to the thing that keeps me up at night thinking what to do… this dang wind turbine. I want it to work so bad, I think they’re cool, love seeing it operate and love the idea of it making a little power on those cold low solar winter nights.

What I already have in place, a 70’ tall tower, 300’ of 10-6 fine stranded copper wire 600v insulation buried from said tower to my batteries and charge controller, a 24v “2000watt” (ha ha ha right) Missouri wind and solar freedom 2 9 blade turbine, and their charge controller with a dump load. Also have 4 6v lead acid batteries that aren’t completely dead to do testing on if needed. My problem is the huge wire run (ran it by Missouri wind and solar, they said it was no problem) (real world huge massive freaking problem!!!) voltage drop would make it to where the turbine wouldn’t produce a high enough voltage to charge the batteries unless we had 30+ mph winds.

If you’re still with me, any advice? Scrap it, pull the wire up tear the tower down and accept defeat? I don’t want to accept that but I just want to hear others ideas too lol.

 

[Hedges]

What voltage and current do you think the alternator puts out?
Calculate IR drop. Probably a percentage, but doubt it would completely kill charging.
If voltage at any current drops too low for 24V charging, try 12V charging.
Alternatively, try putting your 24V battery at the tower.
If that is successful, consider a transformer to step up alternator output for the long run, and step back down at the battery. Or (more expensive) an MPPT charge controller in place of the step down (it would require its on voltage protection, but operating at high voltage.)

 

[MurphyGuy]

Most wind turbines don't start making any appreciable power until the winds are greater than 15 mph.. and even then, they only make a little bit of juice. The real power doesn't kick in until they're north of 20 to 25 mph winds and those winds remain steady.

See the graph below. This is the power curve charge from a Bergey 10kW turbine, which runs about $25,000 to $30,000.

5 Meters per second = 11.2mph and it only makes 1000 watts.. that's 1/10 of its 10kW rating.
9 Meters per second = 20 mph and it makes about 1/2 of what its rated for.

Keep in mind, this is one of the better professionally engineered turbines that cost a lot of money.. This is the kind of thing a university college or small town might put up... it is far better than some back yard engineered model..

Most people think wind turbines make lots of power, and they do, but not until you scale them up to a point where you can see them from 20 miles away.
Unlike solar, and even hydro, wind turbines do not scale down well.

You should ask them for a power curve charge for the model you purchased.. beyond that, simple ohms law will tell you exactly what you should expect at the end of your long wire run.

I've been wanting a turbine since I put in my solar system and discovered the real world effects of a Michigan winter on power generation.. But during these cold winter months, we seem to have lots of wind.. So I figured I could put a wind turbine up and just run it in the winter.. Problem is that the math doesn't add up. Even a 2kW unit wouldn't make enough juice to run my microwave for very long unless we were in the middle of a storm or blizzard.. Those pesky economics just can not be made to work at this smallish scale unless you live on top of a mountain or a very large hill and don't need much of a tower.

 

[Smokin]

I would place a group of batterys at the base of the tower. Charge them off windmill. Send the power to the Shack with a boost converter circuit. An inverter would work. Needs to be a control circuit to turn on and off the boost circuit. This should be easy to manage. Your windmill need to be loaded correctly to trim the blades at 90 mph tip speed. Apparent wind. If the load is wrong the blades will overspeed and not be in trim and all is basicly lost. So what is needed is the load as close to the wind turbine as possible. That's how they are designed to work.

 

[Bluedog225]

Sorry it didn’t work out. Thanks for sharing your experience.

 

[robby]

Lots of solutions like batteries right by the Wind turbine and then a cheap battery Inverter to send 120Vac down that 300ft of wire and you could power some loads with that. At the end of the day you may be dumping good money into a pit. You might be better off using that money on the "More solar idea" and sell that system to offset your expenses.

 

[Hedges]

Another thought, test it with resistive loads to determine how much power it does produce, and at what voltage and current.
That could help you decide if worth altering system to make it usable.

Actually, your four 6V batteries configured with switches connectors as 6V/12V/18V/24V could be used to present a range of loads for testing.

 

[066logger]

Thank you guys, the more I think about it the more I like putting the batteries up at the tower and getting a small 24v inverter to send ac 120v to the house. For a multitude of reasons. #1 is then I can disconnect my charger from the wind turbine completely in the house for when we have storms. I have always been concerned about a lightning strike making it’s way down the wire and blowing up my whole system. #2 it gets the nasty lead acid batteries and low budget fire hazard charge controller out of the house 🤣. #3 that certainly would remove any excuse of the system not preforming because of voltage drop from the long run. Also the charger I have is an aimes, just like the one Will uses. They brag that it can handle variable voltage from dirty generators and it’s 120v so that would work.

I like it! As to the voltage the wind turbine puts out I never got a really straight answer. I was told over a hundred volts in high wind conditions but any more information than that was proprietary information 🙄 . They did tell me to use 25amp breakers on each leg when I discussed putting breakers in-line as some form or hope of lightning protection.

 

[Hedges]

Before buying the 24V inverter, see how well turbine charges 24V vs. 12V battery by the tower. Could be low wind most of the time just wasn't high enough for charging 24V.

 

[066logger]

Before buying the 24V inverter, see how well turbine charges 24V vs. 12V battery by the tower. Could be low wind most of the time just wasn't high enough for charging 24V.

That’s true, I can just put the batteries up there and let it rip for awhile and see what kinda power it’s producing. And maybe I’ll get some high wind days where I can actually monitor the voltage it’s putting out

 

[robby]

That’s true, I can just put the batteries up there and let it rip for awhile and see what kinda power it’s producing. And maybe I’ll get some high wind days where I can actually monitor the voltage it’s putting out

If you have an extra $100 and a PC lying around I would get this data logger instead. That way you can see how it performs over a period of days or weeks.

Data Logger

Manual

I have done zero research on it but a quick look shows it handles up to 600VDC and 10Amps plus allows you to set the measurement Intervals. The Amp meter section cannot be used for your application but the voltage will give you an idea of what the turbine is producing. Better yet since it can log in the mV range with 10uV accuracy you could pick up a Shunt and wire it to the Logger and see how many Amps it is producing during any point in the day.

 

[066logger]

If you have an extra $100 and a PC lying around I would get this data logger instead. That way you can see how it performs over a period of days or weeks.

Data Logger

Manual

I have done zero research on it but a quick look shows it handles up to 600VDC and 10Amps plus allows you to set the measurement Intervals. The Amp meter section cannot be used for your application but the voltage will give you an idea of what the turbine is producing. Better yet since it can log in the mV range with 10uV accuracy you could pick up a Shunt and wire it to the Logger and see how many Amps it is producing during any point in the day.

To be honest Robby I’m not great with a computer lol. Mine died several years back and with a smart phone I ended up using it instead. I need to get one just for projects like this. The charge controller I have does at least show kWh produced to date so I will not be completely shooting in the dark.

A lot of this stuff I’m learning as I go, I love it and really enjoy learning about all of it but I’m completely self taught in everything electrical so please excuse my lack of great information to give you as most of the time I don’t really know what the heck I’m doing lol.

 

[066logger]

Here’s what the interface looks like on the charge controller I have. I believe it has a shunt or two in it to measure amps coming in with solar and wind. I think…

 

[066logger]

Here’s what the interface looks like on the charge controller I have. I believe it has a shunt or two in it to measure amps coming in with solar and wind. I think…

And actually! I think I have an idea. I have remote cameras that if plugged in can record constantly. So I could set a camera to watch the screen and then just review the footage. Kinda a redneck back door data logger right??

 

[Hedges]

Add OCR and transcription to a text file, and you've got it made!

 

[066logger]

Add OCR and transcription to a text file, and you've got it made!

Caveman terms?? 🤣

 

[robby]

And actually! I think I have an idea. I have remote cameras that if plugged in can record constantly. So I could set a camera to watch the screen and then just review the footage. Kinda a redneck back door data logger right??

That is a good way to do it if you want save some money.

 

[Hedges]

But a lot of work to process the data.


Also a lot of semiconductor technology and storage capacity.
Compare to this old-time analog method:

What you really want are a few numbers stored in a file, that you could later process in Excel.
Robby's data logger would be ideal. And a lot cheaper than what I have, which I've used to log refrigerator consumption:

Converting video stream from your camera to data would be a project by itself:

OCR in video? openCV or image proccesing with OCR?

I have to write a program that does OCR from a video taken from the screen inside a car in front of the driver, so it does OCR only for digits. I am trying to find the way to implement it. I am th...

stackoverflow.com

 

[Ron]

Three-wire setup from the turbine(three-wire turbine) to the charge controller location. A rectifier converts to 48 or 24 volts to the batteries. This helps eliminate the voltage drop problems. If u have wind.

 

[12VoltInstalls]

Here’s what the interface looks like on the charge controller I have. I believe it has a shunt or two in it to measure amps coming in with solar and wind. I think…

$15 LCD Display and Shunt https://www.amazon.com/dp/B017BDQHE...t_i_T8GXTHNFR2NW4VFFX2HN?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

Did you get to figuring what you’re getting?