Introduction and the days ive been experimenting

[Glenn Hendriks]

Hi there !

Im Glenn 23 years old and live in the Netherlands.
And im Studying electronics so thats handy . And couple days i work in a generator repair shop very handy too.

Couple weeks ago i surfed the net and read about wind mills.
I was so excited that i demolished an old printer for a stepper motor.
And just give it a try.

And in a hurry made this thingy so its not beautifull, used a cd case for the tail wing as example :p . There is a white bright led near the tail to see if there is realy some power. And there is ;)

http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/3062/dsc07411vv3.jpg

Now im more excited and want to build a bigger wind turbine for charging 12 volt battery.

Saw Hugh Piggot's site, and decided to make such a wind turbine only smaller.
Ordered a couple sets of Rare earth magnets at dealextreme.com. Now im waiting on those :)

And now im already busy asambling a charge controller.
Found this electric diagram.
Its not the most efficient controller but i hope it works for testing.

http://www.mdpub.com/Wind_Turbine/images/oldchargecontroller.jpg

There are components missing on the PCB and need to find a nice looking case for it. :)

But here is the PCB i drawed and made.

http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/7200/dsc07413xj2.jpg
http://img376.imageshack.us/img376/8914/dsc07414wx4.jpg


Well, i hope i can learn some more here :)

[Rob Beckers]

Welkom op Green Power Talk Glenn!
Nice wind turbine! Let us know how it works out. looking at the electrical diagram, the controller is a simple diversion-type controller that switches to a dump-load at a set voltage. It should work just fine, it won't do anything fancy in terms of charging (such as seperate stages for absorb - bulk - float charging). That doesn't matter as long as you don't have lots of money invested in batteries.

-RoB-
(A fellow Dutchman from Maastricht)

[Glenn Hendriks]

Thank you Rob. Nice to see that im not the only dutchman here :)

Yep youre right. Just a simple protection for the battery.
This one was easy to make. And easy to find electronic components.

Now i only need to make a bigger wind turbine that produces enough power to charge a battery.

If this works good enough, then im going to make things more efficient ( turbine blade made of wood and better charge controller etc. )


Today i tested a old Ametek stepper motor that i picked up from my work.
It runs 2100 rpm on 24 volt. I was afraid it was to much rpm .

http://img53.imageshack.us/img53/6494/dsc07404sq4.jpg
http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/268/dsc07412pv4.jpg

Made set of PVC blades 60cm long each.
And tested here in my backyard. And my thoughts where right.
It has a louzy 2 voltage in steady wind and peaks about 5 volt.

[Joe Blake]

Hi from Australia, Glenn.

Hope you profit from visiting us.

We're not particularly windy in Perth, Western Australia (at least consistently enough to warrant building a wind generator) but I'm always looking for interesting things to build and/or play with.

Joe

PS I'm not Dutch, and I don't know anybody from the Netherlands, but I like watching the Tour de France and I can spell Rabobank. (Although I'm not sure how many "a's" there are).

;)

J

[Glenn Hendriks]

Yeah you are right about Rabobank . Its the main sponsor i think... dont look tour de France. ;)

Well its not kinda windy here to where i live. The steady wind speed is about 10km/h and so. And i live near trees and buildings.

Like you said. I like to build things and experimenting with it. :)