test turbine install

[Brian McGowan]

I have acquired this windturbine inexpensively on Ebay.
Item number: 300278149195

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300278149195&ru=http%3A%2F%2Fshop.ebay.com%3A80%2F%3F_from%3DR4 0%26_trksid%3Dm38.l1313%26_nkw%3D300278149195%26_s acat%3DSee-All-Categories%26_fvi%3D1

I decided to go for this as a test mostly so I could stick something up in the yard and see what the neighbors and township would say and it was not much more expensive than a “weather station” which would not yield me any power, only data. Last weekend I was standing out in the side yard with an automobile radiator fan “C”clamped to the top of a 6’ step ladder with a meter hooked to it and it was getting 2.5VDC even though the blade area exceeded the “Betz limit” by a wide margin. I was actually considering cutting 2 of the 6 blades out so it would be at the “Betz limit”. That’s when I decided this is nuts and I must do something better even if it’s only a little better. If I get away with this and yield any power I plan to park a 40’ telephone pole at the corner of the garage and put the turbine up there and eventually build a good turbine and mount that on the pole. At the moment I have 192W of solar panel and if the turbine made up for those on cloudy windy days I would be good with that and that’s all I really expect.
My Mounting plan.
I have 2 10’ lengths of 1.5”sch40 steel pipe. I was thinking I would screw a “T” to the bottom with the 90deg opening facing front for the cable to come out of and then a 1.5”xclose nipple and another “T” at a right angle to the first one so screwing 2 small nipples to it would make them stick out to the sides through which I could then stick a piece of 1” sch40 pipe through to help make a hinge like arrangement to raise and lower the tower. I found this “auger anchor” kit at Tractor supply.

http://www.tractorsupply.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay_10551_10001_137868_-1______?rFlag=true&cFlag=1

I was thinking I could screw 2 of these into the ground about a foot apart and then stick the “hinge” in between and run the biggest bolt I could fit through the eyes of the anchors and the “hinge” as a mount. Next I would take 3 more anchors and use them for guy wires and use the last anchor as a point to mount a pulley to haul the tower up. I could screw another length of 1.5” to the “T” the wire would come out of as a “Gin Pole” to aid in raising the tower with maybe one of those chain link fence post tops as a guide for the raising rope.
This is probably far from perfect but it is a test and is also temporary. I wish this alternator had the rectifier removed and 3 phase coming down the wire like the Windblue unit but it doesn’t so I may remove the rectifier myself and wire 3 phase to come down the pole. I figure this turbine is so small I could use 12AWGx3 SJ to come down the pole then 12AWGx3 anything to get into the garage where the batteries are and rectify it there. If I go with the DC the alternator provides I would need at least 6AWG to get to the batteries and that would be expensive and lossy.
Location. If you are so inclined to check it out, you can type 4 Hoffman Ave. zip 19320 into your favorite satellite view website and see where I am. It is the house on the southeast corner backing up against the woods. Prevailing wind is from the WNW so I am planning to put it 25’ to the left of the driveway in that side yard by the intersection. Distance between the driveway and the street is about 66’.
I could use help locating a “guy ring” for my 1.5” pipe. This should be easy to do but I seem to be having trouble actually locating one to buy.
It is a 5’ mill on a 20’ pole. I welcome any comments or suggestions.
Comment away.
Brian

[Rob Beckers]

Hi Brian,

Let us know how it goes!
By the way, the number of blades has no relation to the Betz limit. The Betz limit just says that you can't get more than 59% or so of the energy out of the wind, no matter how hard you try. Some turbines use lots of blades, some use few, there have even been one-bladed turbines. In general, the more blades, the slower the optimal RPM and the more issues with drag you get. More blades tend to be less efficient, but some turbines use this to their advantage to naturally limit the maximum unloaded RPM so the turbine can't 'run away'.

Those augers you linked to look like the ones that the utility companies use for guying their poles.

-RoB-

[Brian McGowan]

I will keep you posted.
I am getting schooled about turbine info on another forum as well. This is fairly new turf for me.
The augers are 3" diameter and 18" long. I think they will do the job OK. The ground here is very much clay. I'm going to give it a whirl. I was at Home Depot last night fitting pipe together for the "hinge". I think it will go like this. On the bottom goes a 1.5" "T". In the ends of the T goes 1.5"-1.25" reducing bushings. Into the bushings goes 2 short 1/25" nipples depending on how long the 1" pipe I can get precut is and how they fit together. 1"pipe through the middle fits nice. I will have to probabaly remove internal burrs to make a good fit. The 2 augers will go in spread far enough apart to accept the 1" pipe in between. A fender washer on each end of the pipe and a fender washer on each end of the bolt that goes through the whole assembly and the anchors.

I was looking at wire to get the power back to my batteries. The seller of the turbine recomends AWG 6 welding wire to get down the pole then #10AWGx4 with wires attached in pairs to reduce resistance. I'm not really planning to get more than 5-10 amps out of this thing really but my luck a big wind storm will come up and I'll be dealing with 60A. I think I will put a junction box at the corner of the garage and run a wire around the outside to the back and come in the hole my air heater ducts come in. Then another length out of the junction box in a shallow trench across the yard to the turbine. Later if I put up a pole at the corner of the garage I will already have the connection point there.

I need to make a dump load arrangement. I was going to use those car heaters that plug into the car CLA at 150W each and have maybe 2 of these. I need to make or buy a dump load controller. I started off thinking about the C60 type controller in dump mode. I'm not sure if that still gets me the PWM charging or not. I figured I would just turn the voltage set on my MPPT controller for the solar panels all the way up, tie the turbine right to the batteries and let the C60 regulate things. I am also considering making my own circuit to just turn on the dump loads at a certain point and turn the back off again at another. My latest consideration was to make a multistage dump load controller by making 2 circuits on the same board and having 1 turn on at some voltage and having the other turn on if the voltage still gets above the first setpoint and off when it gets a little below that first setpoint. I don't know if that's worth the effort or not and which of these 3 methods are better for the battery.
Any opinions on this matter would be apreciated.

That's all for this for now. The turbine is in transit from CA and I am gathering parts for this project.
This weekend I hope to finish and deploy my new solar air heater but I have been thwarted for the last 2 weekends by domestic chores and holiday shopping. I have been taking too many pictures and will try to select a bunch that depicts the general spirit of the build without getting into painstaking detail and post them maybe on my website and post a link here.

Brian

[Brian McGowan]

I got my 20' tower (1.5" pipe)up and was wondering how tight to make
the guy wires and how to measure this.
Brian

[Rob Beckers]

Maybe one of the people with a Whisper on a guyed tower can chime in (should be similar tube size)? Keep us posted Brian. Don't forget the pictures! :nuts:

-RoB-

[Brian McGowan]

Yeah. Pictures. It has been so cold that I couldn't stop shivering long enough to take pictures that came out and now everything is covered with 4" of snow and 1/2" of ice on top of that. Even the ones I took in the garage were blurry since it was 22 out there at the time. I really hate the cold. I have been really cold in my life a couple of times and I don't like it. I will get pictures as soon as I can of what is assembled. I will be doing some work in the basement so I can take pictures of that work. Sunday it's supposed to be 40 so maybe I can take some pictures then.
Brian

[Ric Murphy]

Brian,
I have a 70', 4" tower with 1/4 guy wires. No real "measureable" way to define proper tension. Best I can describe is just to keep the wires taut...not too tight...not too loose. I know that sounds pretty simplistic but my tower has seen 50+mph winds with no problems at all. Just use your best judgement and you'll be fine.
Ric

[Rob Beckers]

Here's what ARE says about guy wire tension for their tilt-ups: The first set of guy wires, closest to the ground should have around 2" of sag in the middle. Guy wires are adjusted so the lower tower section is exactly vertical (check with a level), and they show that same amount of sag. Higher guy wires have increasingly more sag, as these are longer. Tension is adjusted so the tower sections align when looking up with your eye next to the first tower section. As Ric says, "taut" but not "tight". There should be a visible amount of sag in the wires. If they look too straight they are probably too tight.

-RoB-

[Brian McGowan]

OK I will check the next time I can get out there. Of course right now it's cold with rain saturated ice covered snow and windy as all getout. My windturbine sits in a box in the garage while I run the charger because there was no sun today. I did check for verticle with a 4' long level and it is right on.
I will keep you all posted.
Brian

[Ralph Day]

Hi
I have an 80' guyed tower for an H80. The install manual and my experience is this: as tight as you can hand tighten them. That will leave sag in the middle. As the wind blows harder the tower will lean until the sag is taken up. If you were banjo string tight you would be putting an immense amount of stress on your tower. The downward stresses imposed by the wind pushing, the guy holding the tower vertical would likely exceed what the steel could stand and the thing would come tumbling down. I'm not about to try over tightening. What you can do with your own hands should do. (Look at trees, they flex or they fall).

The above obviously doesn't hold true for large lattice guyed towers. THe big 10kw units have turnbuckles to keep things tight, but for the little fellows follow the manufacturer's guidelines.

Ralph

[Brian McGowan]

Thanks for all the info on guy wires. I got a chance to check and they were not as tight as I thought they were so I am going to leave them right where they are as this already seems to match most peoples opinions.

This installation is nearing completion. Tower is up and wire is run
from the bottom of the tower to the garage and I need to add wire
from that point to my batteries. The Turbine is painted and assembly
mostly completed. A plastic junction box is mounted to the bottom of
the pole so I have a place to make the connection between the wires
coming down the pole and the wires going to the garage. I have a few
more questions.

Should I fuse the wires coming in from the turbine? I am going to run
them into a diode at the batteries so power will only be applied to
the wire when the turbine is generating power and not when it is
stationary for safety reasons. My concern is to never let the turbine be unloaded.

Should I fuse the dumpload? My guess is yes on this but I don't see
this turbine really making a lot of power. Will this be OK if the
fuse blows? I only worry about this if I'm not home and power needs
to be dumped. If I am home I am sure I can find a use for any excess
power. Once again, my concern is to never let the turbine be unloaded.

My prefered connection plan at this nanosecond is to wire the turbine through
the diode directly to the battery and wire the dump load relay also
directly to the battery so it turns on the dump load or not as
required.
The alternate plan is to wire the turbine to the dumpload control
relay and have the battery wired to the normally closed terminal and
the dump load wired to the normally open terminal so as to switch
between the battery and the dumpload with only one getting the power
at any given time.
Any opinions?

All input is apreciated.
Brian

[Brian McGowan]

OK I hope I got this right.
Real quick.


6AWG welding cable laid out on floor.
http://home.comcast.net/~bigvid/pics/100_6010s.jpg

Applying Deoxit to stripped wire. I don’t know if this will help or not.
http://home.comcast.net/~bigvid/pics/100_6016s.jpg

Applying Locktite to the clamping screw of the connector.
http://home.comcast.net/~bigvid/pics/100_6017s.jpg

Complete end.
http://home.comcast.net/~bigvid/pics/100_6025s.jpg

Set of wires.
http://home.comcast.net/~bigvid/pics/100_6026s.jpg

Tower
http://home.comcast.net/~bigvid/pics/100_6031sr.jpg

Turnbuckle
http://home.comcast.net/~bigvid/pics/100_6029s.jpg

Connection box
http://home.comcast.net/~bigvid/pics/100_6033s.jpg

Wire Run
http://home.comcast.net/~bigvid/pics/100_6034s.jpg

Painted parts
http://home.comcast.net/~bigvid/pics/100_6037s.jpg

[Rob Beckers]

Looking good Brian!
By the way, for electrical connections, if you want them to last forever you could solder them (I noticed you have a copper lug and copper wire, so it would have been easily soldered after screwing down the clamping screw). I don't know "Deoxit", looks like it's a contact cleaning component (something that breaks down oxides to restore electrical contact). What is used by electricians for outside electrical connections is dielectric grease. It keeps the water out, insulates, and keeps the copper from oxidizing. That's another option for screw-type electrical connections.

Let us know how things go!

-RoB-

[Brian McGowan]

Rob,
Thanks. I'm getting closer. I am certain this is not a permanent installation so that's why I used the clamp type connectors.

The Deoxit is a cleaner and also helps keep the contact clean. Some projector manufacturers have recomended this for problems with oxidation on flexible circuit connectors so I thought I'd try it here and see what happens.
http://www.deoxit.com/

Today I managed to run wire around the inside of my garage to the batteries. I connected the positive lead to the anode of a big diode and the cathode to a fuse holder with a 30 amp fuse and to the battery. The negative lead goes to a current shunt and then to the negative lead of the battery. The turbine sits on a pipe which is clamped to a small ladder. It gets it's wings tomorrow. It's supposed to be windy tomorrow. I probably won't get it up before the wind gets here. I took pictures.
I also finally trimmed the 2 AWG wire to my inverters down to size. I need some of it to connect my homebuilt generator.

I need to get my dumpload wired up also.

OK that's it for now. Will post pitcures when I get them extracted from my camera.
Brian

[Brian McGowan]

All the wiring is hooked up. All I have to do is lower the tower, grease the yaw bearing point, bolt on the blade assembly and raise it back up. Hopefully this happens tonight.
Pictures when I get them.
Brian

[Brian McGowan]

Hello All,
It is up and it’s supposed to be windy today. They are talking 15-25. Should be interesting.
Brian

http://home.comcast.net/~bigvid/100_6060s.JPG
http://home.comcast.net/~bigvid/100_6061s.JPG

[Rob Beckers]

Brian, looking good! :)
How did things go with the storm? Everything still standing?

-RoB-

[Brian McGowan]

The wind did not materialize yesterday. It topped out at 7MPH. Today is another story. The local weather monitoring station has already recorded 25MPH wind and gusts to 45MPH and it has been above 10MPH for about 6.5 hours so far today and above 15MPH for about 5 of those hours. I am at work so I have no idea what is happening at home but I can't wait to get there and see.
My wife was the first one to see it spin this morning. I watched it produce about 1 amp at 12.7 volts in a mild breeze for about 6 seconds this morning before I had to leave for work. Flags were moving but not flapping. I will keep you posted.
Brian

[Brian McGowan]

Windturbine report
Since I have little instrumentation and no data recording capability I can only present my personal observations. Here they are in no particular order.

My batteries are in the garage where it was 33 degrees last night and are not in good shape. First the 25A fuse I had in line from the turbine was not blown so I didn’t exceed that. Normally I come home from work and turn on the battery charger. Last night I came home and the batteries were at about 12.550V after charging all day and running the solar heater fans which draw 1.6A and the lawn lights were on. The turbine was spinning away very fast. I saw the current peak at 16.4A one time. I was not fast enough to check the volt meter for a power calculation but I’m guessing it was around 12.75 volts when that happened. I have a brand new (new out of the box but 30 years on my shelf) 0-50V analog meter tied to the input of my diode and ground so I can monitor the voltage output of the turbine itself. I kind of like watching the needle go better than seeing the periodic sampling of a digital meter. You can get a better feel for what is happening. I put every small battery charger I had on and turned on the 12V CF light in my computer room for a total load of about 7.5A. The voltage began to go down slowly and was about 12.250 when all the small batteries were charged and the CF was off leaving only the lawn lights. This morning I checked the voltage again doing my best to take the reading when there was no charging current and got 12.665V so it charged all night and was charging when I left and is probably charging now. In short I did not run the charger and I had 7.5A of load most of the evening instead of coming home and running the charger and doing nothing else. So far so good.

Physical observations.
The unit is agile and tracks changes in wind direction almost instantaneously. It makes a light wishing noise that you can hardly hear over the noise of the wind going through the trees and it’s really spinning fast. I don’t expect to have any complaints about noise from the neighbors. At the street’s edge 40’ away from the base of the tower I can hardly distinguish it from ambient noise and the cover I have over a car 20 feet further behind the turbine tower makes much more noise flapping around in the wind than the turbine.

My bottom line opinion at this moment and this could change:
This is the sledge hammer of turbines. It is probably not the most efficient machine but it is brutally simple and cheap. If you turn it, power will be made. A variety of blade options are available for this type of machine from other manufacturers or you could probably make your own. If I could get it up higher into better air it would probably do much better. My next step, if I decide to take it, will be a telephone pole that sticks up 40’ from the ground with a 6-7 foot stub to mount the turbine to. I took some short videos with my cheap digital camera but like wagon wheels on TV it doesn’t properly show the spinning blades due to frame rate so it is useless as an example.
That’s what I know for now.
Brian