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5/1/13 1:56 PM Old 17 foot wind turbine | Otherpower Page 1 of 9 http://otherpower.com/17page1.html Consulting Services Wind Power Solar Power Hydro Power Engine Power Power Systems Energy Storage Water Pumping Efficient Lighting Conservation Experiments Links OTHERPOWER MAKE YOUR ELECTRICITY FROM SCRATCH! Solar Power Kits Buy Solar Cells Home Wind Turbines Alternative Energy ads Search WORKSHOPS Classes Offered Class Schedule Calendar Workshop Photo Diaries Our Sponsors ENERGY INFO Consulting Services Wind Power The Bottom Line About Wind Turbines Build our 10 foot diameter wind turbine! Otherpower Wind Turbine Users Manual Tilt-up MET tower videos 100-meter tilt-up MET tower Otherpower turbine power curves for Midnite Classic MPPT controller Wind Data Acquisition Example - Southern Indiana, Wireless Wind Turbine Towers Science Fair Wind Generators Our Homebrew Wind Turbine Evolution 7 Foot Diameter Wind Turbine 20 foot diameter wind turbine Home WIND TURBINE STUFF FROM OUR ONLINE STORE! OLD 17 FOOT WIND TURBINE This page is about an older project of ours. We keep ALL of our projects up on the internet for anyone that's interested...but we are no longer pursuing many FOLLOW OTHERPOWER Like 42 people like this. Be the first of your friends. Home About Us Contact Us Discussion Board Online Store Calendar
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OLD 17 FOOT WIND TURBINE
This page is about an older project of ours. We keep ALL of our projects up onthe internet for anyone that's interested...but we are no longer pursuing many
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of these older ideas. Before starting this project, please check our main WindPower page to check for similar, more recent designs. These will be the top ofthe list and flagged with an "active project" tag. If you have any questionsabout what is current and what is not, or why we no longer work on certaindesigns, first check out our Wind Turbine Evolution page for a detailed historyof how our designs have changed over the years. You can also Email us andwe'll fill you in as our email volume permits...check the Evolution page first.
para Español UPDATE! This has been a good machine and the following pagesshould be informative, but before you get too involved building this design besure to see the updated 17 foot designhere:http://www.otherpower.com/new17page1.html
And, be sure to check out our book Homebrew Wind Power for more small windpower information!
These pages serve as a brief summary about building and flying a 17' diameter windturbine from scratch. This is very similar to other designs we've built, just scaled upa bit.
Pictured above are all the metal parts for the machine except for the tail. Unlikemost other machines we've built in the past, this one does not make use of anysalvaged auto parts. (no Volvo parts here!!) I started with a trailer hub, and spindle.The steel rotors for the alternator are 16" in diameter, cut from 1/2" thick steel. Ihad this done at a local shop that has a CNC Water Jet cutter. The disks cost around$70 ea, but they came out very nicely - all the holes predrilled etc. The 'yaw bearing'(that part that slips over the top of the tower) is a 16" long piece of 3" diameterpipe. The spindle for the trailer hub is suspended inside a 4" long piece of 4" dia pipevia two steel 'rings' I cut out with hole saws. The steel bracket that supports the tailpivot is frm 1/2" thick steel, it's 6" tall and cut at an angle of 18 deg, very muchalong the lines of Hugh Piggott's plans - just scaled up a bit.
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Above we have the main chassis for the machine all welded up. To do it over again, Iwould probably make a few things stronger. I'd consider a larger diameter yawbearing. I would reinforce the tail bracket (that flat piece with the 18 deg angle)where it's welded to the yaw bearing. I would use a larger wheel hub/spindle. As itis... it works fine so far, but some minor upgrades would do no harm.
Above I've welded the 6 stator brackets on. The diameter of the stator will be 20", sothe diameter of the stator brackets is also 20". I made a simple 'jig' 20" in diameter,and drilled the 6 holes in it - and a center hole that fits over the wheel spindle,(basically a blank stator) and then we bolt the stator brackets to the jig. We canthen stick the jig over the wheel spindle and weld the brackets on in exactly theright position.
A VERY fine book on buildingyour own wind turbine fromscratch, with step-by-stepinstructions. We know, becausewe wrote it! Buy it here.
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Pictured above is the template we use to place the magnets on the steel rotors. Inthis machine we have 16 magnets per rotor. The magnets are quite large - verypowerful... and dangerous!! They measure 1.5" X 3" X 3/4" thick.
Here I've laid out the path the magnets will take, and the approximate size that Ithink the coils should be. Later on, this wooden piece will serve as the bottom of thestator mould so I'll have some guidelines for placing the coils.
Pictured above we have the magnets 'super glued' onto the rotor, and one rotor ismounted to the machine. Of course we'll need to take this back off so we can castpolyester resin around the magnets.
I made the coil winder so that the inside spindle is the size of my 'paper' coiltemplate. The disks are 6" in diameter, the rest is a simple hand crank affair just likeall the other wind turbines we've made. Most past machines had slightly thinner (1/2"thick) magnets. This machine is using thicker 3/4" thick magnets, so we can also runwith a slightly thicker stator. This stator will be 5/8" thick, so the coils can be a bitthicker. The coil winder, when assembled - makes coils 9/16" thick, I like to windthem a bit thinner than the stator.
First we wind 1 test coil. Since this is a new design - I needed to make a test coil ofthe 'right size'. Then I can run that between the magnet rotors and get an idea ofhow many windings we need for a desired cut-in speed. Since this is planned to be a17' machine, we want a cut-in speed around 70 - 80 rpm. This test coil consists of 79turns of #13 wire.
It would've been prettier if I'd cast this coil into such an assembly, but I tend to getimpatient sometimes. We cut out a piece of plywood and glued the coil in there sowe could mount the coil on 2 of the stator brackets and run it between the magnetrotors.
Here we're testing the coil with only 1 rotor on the machine. We have an opticaltachometer to measure RPM accurately. Here we see 2.4 Volts @ 70 rpm. At thispoint it should be noted... these magnets are really crowded on the disks! At theinner diameter of the 'magnet ring' there is less than 3/8" between the magnets. Thissurely causes some cancellation in the coils when we have two opposite poles over 1coil leg at the same time, and it results in some flux going straight from magnet tomagnet, rather than through our coils where we want it. So we are not making thevery best use of our magnets on this machine, but... we are keeping it perhaps a bitsmaller and lighter weight by doing things this way. It is a compromise.. we spend abit more on magnets, and we have a slightly lighter weight, smaller machine.
Pictured above is the back of the machine with the test coil mounted. You can alsosee the large resistor I used to 'load up' this test coil and get a rough idea of whatsort of power to expect at a given rpm.
The attraction between these magnet rotors is very strong and very dangerous!! Wedrilled at tapped 3 holes in the front rotor so that we 'jack' the rotor down , or 'jack'it back up with 3 1/2" pieces of allthread. (jacking screws) It takes a while, but it'sthe only safe way to do this. Editor's note -- George's fingers are in a BAD place. If
the jacking screws were to fail, he would LOSE 4 fingers. This is unlikely--but it's
always something to keep in mind when dealing with any magnet rotor.
There we have the front rotor on. At 70 rpm now, with this one coil, we see 5.4 VoltsAC - which, is just about perfect for 48 volt cut-in. So my test coil is right in there. Iprefer a slightly higher cut-in speed, so the actual coils will have a few less windingsof slightly heavier wire. One other test I did... I wired this single coil up to a bigresistor (somewhere around 1 ohm I think) and cranked it hard by hand. At about 104rpm, under load, I had 6 Volts AC and 6 Amps into the resistor (36 Watts). Im notsure if I'm figuring all this right - but I think that with 12 coils wired in 3 phase Starconfiguration... I should be close to 400 watts @ 100 rpm.
At this point we have about 2 days work into the project.
