Wind turbine dump *novice alert*

[OzSolar]

At the end of the day it was my toddler who got the most excitement out of my turbine when he would see the blades spinning up. My advice to anyone on a budget is to buy another battery if you need more juice to get you through the night. If you're not on a budget and can't get the idea out of your head, just do it, it's your journey and/or learning experience

Well said.

That's what I try to say but it comes out "you're an idiot if you think small wind is going to work for you". ?‍ I'm working on softening that though.

We've recently had numerous 3 to 4 days cloudless stretches in row here so I'm not even sure extra battery storage pencils out for my location. Of course since I'm grid I end up buying 12 cent kWh's to back fill what the solar doesn't offset but for those who live off grid that extra battery capacity would sit unused >90%(?) of the year. Compare that to cost the year a few more hours of generator run time per year.

Also... most of these cloudy days have been very calm so a wind turbine would have been no help (there I go again sorry)

 

[Hogheavenfarm]

Yes, there is something about seeing the blades spinning, especially if you have done much work on it, it is rewarding, whereas solar just sits there, pretty boring. If you enjoy tinkering, the turbine is great, it cannot compare to panels in any way. Boring is reliable and pretty much maintenance free, the turbine is a sports car that needs constant attention and tweaking. To each his own.

 

[DPC]

High power heaters got 12 or 24 volt

Maybe these are hard to come by
I really could not say….

I think it would be pretty easy to take an electric drier apart and cut up the heater grid
Split once it’s two 60 volt section 4-30 volt sections 8 -15 volt sections

Add a thermostat borrow from safeties from the drier add a 12 volt automotive fan to blow air.

You could make a pretty simple dump load/heater
It’s just a question of salvaging heaters for the heater wire

 

[DPC]

Wind turbines
If you want to try and make one i am great with the idea
I even think about it myself
My grandfather got his hands on an old wooden airplane propellor and wanted to spin a gm generator with it
But he never finished the project because he had idea how

These days it’s easy to find all kinds of kit plans and books
You just need so wind and time ( maybe money )

Where I live it’s not very windy
Might get a few watts out of todays wind but I’m not sure it’s enough to do any meaningful charging

Your locations will dictate viability

Sometimes I just make stuff because I can and I just like this kind of thing
Might not serve any purpose other than to amuse me

 

[OzSolar]

For those that want to build thier own wind turbine take a minute to check out

High Piggott's book

 

[Dona40]

The biggest fallacy I see with hobby wind turbines is that the generator is one-to-one with the blades. It would work better to overdrive the generator but then, that takes more HP I.E. bigger blades. ( I might just play with that...)

 

[DPC]

The biggest fallacy I see with hobby wind turbines is that the generator is one-to-one with the blades. It would work better to overdrive the generator but then, that takes more HP I.E. bigger blades. ( I might just play with that...)

I think no you need a lot of wind

And we’ll designed blades a proper good generator and what ever the wind equiv of an mppt charge controller is

 

[OzSolar]

The biggest fallacy I see with hobby wind turbines is that the generator is one-to-one with the blades. It would work better to overdrive the generator but then, that takes more HP I.E. bigger blades. ( I might just play with that...)

I've long pondered that the ideal wind turbine for ~98% of residential sites would make its peak power at ~16 mph or less. The reasoning is that most sites spend ~98% of their time at wind speeds less than 16mph so why design a turbine for less than 2% of the year?

To do that you would grossly oversize your rotor compared to your generator and then be totally reliant on a yet to be invented furling system that would work 100% of the time for at least 10 years with no maintenance. In other words, a fairy tale.

Bigger blades make more power that the generator, the overspeed protection system and the tower has to deal with.

The longest-lived wind turbines have a relatively small rotor in relation to the size of the generator.

There's a member here with an ARE 2.5 turbine that I think they said is 15 years old, trouble free and still making power. That's a 315lb (143 kg) turbine with an 11.8ft (3.6 m) rotor. Talk about heavy metal.

Years ago, HomePower magazine did a nice write up on small wind in which they used lbs./kw (or maybe it was kw/lb.) as a key metric to determine the quality of the wind turbine.

 

[DPC]

I have a theory that states for wind to be of any value it must be so cheap your rig can sit idle a lot more than solar systems

Ultra cheap so if they break your ongoing to be upset
Ultra simple to build some you can run several turbines at once ( if you have space )
Ultra safe they must have brakes as well as furling incase something goes wrong

 

[HighDesertOffgrid]

I have a theory that states for wind to be of any value it must be so cheap your rig can sit idle a lot more than solar systems

Ultra cheap so if they break your ongoing to be upset
Ultra simple to build some you can run several turbines at once ( if you have space )
Ultra safe they must have brakes as well as furling incase something goes wrong

Are there any small turbine manufacturers that offer a "constant speed" blade assembly? I would think if one were pitched for low wind and speed governed to stay below a selected voltage it would be ideal. Not ultra simple, but not complex either.

The first attempts at constant-speed propellers were called counterweight propellers, which were driven by mechanisms that operated on centrifugal force. Their operation is identical to the centrifugal governor used by James Watt to control the speed of steam engines. Eccentric weights were set up near or in the spinner, held in by a spring. When the propeller reached a certain RPM, centrifugal force would cause the weights to swing outwards, which would drive a mechanism that twisted the propeller into a steeper pitch. When the propeller slowed, the RPM would decrease enough for the spring to push the weights back in, realigning the propeller to the shallower pitch.

 

[OzSolar]

Are there any small turbine manufacturers that offer a "constant speed" blade assembly? I would think if one were pitched for low wind and speed governed to stay below a selected voltage it would be ideal. Not ultra simple, but not complex either.

You might get a kick out of studying the wind chargers from the early rural electrification days in the 30's. They had a variety of mechanical overspeed protection systems.

Wind Generator Governors

My Joomla CMS

www.wincharger.com

 

[OzSolar]

I have a theory that states for wind to be of any value it must be so cheap your rig can sit idle a lot more than solar systems

Ultra cheap so if they break your ongoing to be upset
Ultra simple to build some you can run several turbines at once ( if you have space )
Ultra safe they must have brakes as well as furling incase something goes wrong

That's pretty much it. One more thing I would try to add to your list:
One also needs to add a high acceptance for variability factor into the mix. EG: you can never rely on when you're going to get energy from a small turbine.

 

[DPC]

A car had 3 independent braking systems front back and parking brake

A wind mill should have two
Then you know with good maintenance and t should never grenade on you

 

[HighDesertOffgrid]

You might get a kick out of studying the wind chargers from the early rural electrification days in the 30's. They had a variety of mechanical overspeed protection systems.

Wind Generator Governors

My Joomla CMS

www.wincharger.com

She's up there singing today.

 

[Zwy]

My brother bought one these used, 17.5Kw. https://www.jacobswind.net/

60 foot tower, he has it on a hinges on 2 legs and lowers it using a winch, takes about 2 hours to lower the tower down. He has it grid tie and locks it down once his bank is built up. He originally was paid $0.10Kwh. Pretty good unit, still requires maintenance.

 

[OzSolar]

My brother bought one these used, 17.5Kw. https://www.jacobswind.net/

60 foot tower, he has it on a hinges on 2 legs and lowers it using a winch, takes about 2 hours to lower the tower down. He has it grid tie and locks it down once his bank is built up. He originally was paid $0.10Kwh. Pretty good unit, still requires maintenance.

Wow that would be neat to see. Those are massive machines. How is he charging the batteries?

About 10 years ago I helped a guy rebuild and reinstall a few of the grid tie models on an existing site so they were grandfathered in. I think the problem with trying to do anything with them today would be getting the utility to approve them for installation at a new site since thier 40+ year old inverters would not meet today's UL1741 or IEE1541.

 

[Zwy]

Wow that would be neat to see. Those are massive machines. How is he charging the batteries?

About 10 years ago I helped a guy rebuild and reinstall a few of the grid tie models on an existing site so they were grandfathered in. I think the problem with trying to do anything with them today would be getting the utility to approve them for installation at a new site since thier 40+ year old inverters would not meet today's UL1741 or IEE1541.

They forced him onto net metering when there was merger between the local REC and another utility. He just runs his net meter bank up to the limit, then locks the rotor so it isn't wearing the power head out. He doesn't require a dump load as he net meters. He told me it will output up to 22Kw.

He had some trouble with bearings and rebuilt the head with larger bearings and shafts. He tilts it down once a year for greasing and to check it over. He can't climb due to a back injury 15 years ago sustained from a fall off his shop roof that left him temporarily paralyzed. He walks now with a brace but eventually will have to resort to a wheelchair. His wife had passed away from cancer the year before shortly after giving birth to his youngest son about a year prior. Kinda of a hard road to travel, 3 young children, lost his wife and then fell off a roof and was paralyzed.

He put the tower up since then. It was all grid tie and inspected, my cousin (licensed electrician) did the wiring for the utility connection.

I tell him that eventually they will eliminate net metering or make it so they get the power for nothing. He will then have to decide what he will do next. Windpower is big here in Iowa, we have many wind farms here and more going up.

My older brother purchased one of these used too, he never put it up. I think they both paid around $5K for them. Foundation is 3 foot in diameter and 15 feet deep with 3 legs. It must have some type of disconnect to meet UL1741 or simply the rotor locks down. Probably the rotor locks down (I never asked) as there isn't a dump load. No power during outages unless he has a battery bank as a UPS. I should go look at it again, has been some time since I was there.