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Forum Index : Windmills : VAWT Question
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MacGyver Guru  Joined: 12/05/2009 Location: United StatesPosts: 1329 |
Crew Does anybody know of an Interweb sight, which like Alton's Calculator, calculates useable power from different blade diameters and wind speeds for VAWTs (Vertical Axis Wind Turbines)? I'm in the planning stage of building a GWAVT (Ginormous) and would love to see the light at the end of the tunnel without having to travel very far down the tracks to size it up. . . . . . Mac Nothing difficult is ever easy! Perhaps better stated in the words of Morgan Freeman, "Where there is no struggle, there is no progress!" Copeville, Texas |
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fillm Guru Joined: 10/02/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 730 |
Take the HAWT output and divide by 3 for a high tec state of art V-Wat or up to 6 for a piece of kenitic art. I cant wait to see your version of "Ginormous VAWT" , whats it going to do , pump air ? PhillM ...Oz Wind Engineering..Wind Turbine Kits 500W - 5000W ~ F&P Dual Kits ~ GOE222Blades- Voltage Control Parts ------- Tower kits |
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| MacGyver Guru Joined: 12/05/2009 Location: United StatesPosts: 1329 |
fillm One will pump air and several others will make electricity. I need a small one to generate electricity to light my fence. I light it now with 3-volt LEDs attached in parallel and spaced every 2 feet, just to make it stand out in the night, so a cow doesn't plow through it or something. It also looks nice with a lighted outline around my place. Future fence and area lighting will be 12-volt and I'll have at least one HAWT doing that job. Low-current lighting makes a lot of sense in thunder storms, which can knock out the electricity for hours at a time. I plan on having both 110 vac as well as 12-volt d.c. lighting in my new house, which starts construction in about a week. The surface wind here blows across the south pasture uninterrupted on a daily and nightly basis averaging 15 to 20 mph; lots of wind here. The "prototype" (GHAWT) will be 4 feet in diameter, set about 8' up in the breeze. It will swing a flat blade 18" x 48". I'll post the build as it happens. After I get some meaninful data from the first HWAT, I may up the size to swing a 16' x 18" flat blade. This design can be built as large as you like; it's just a matter of anchoring it in the ground against winds that can get upwards of 100 mph. I have to keep in mind, if the HAWT is torn loose in another tornado, it will become a projectile and the last thing I need is to have something the size of a small car whirling around my yard! . . . . . Mac Nothing difficult is ever easy! Perhaps better stated in the words of Morgan Freeman, "Where there is no struggle, there is no progress!" Copeville, Texas |
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Gizmo Admin Group  Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5078 |
Phill, stop stiring up the VAWT builders! The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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Madness Guru Joined: 08/10/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2498 |
If it was horizontal axis it would be more of a whipping motion! There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't. |
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| fillm Guru Joined: 10/02/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 730 |
I think you mean VAWT "ARTISTS" Glenn . PhillM ...Oz Wind Engineering..Wind Turbine Kits 500W - 5000W ~ F&P Dual Kits ~ GOE222Blades- Voltage Control Parts ------- Tower kits |
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Tinker Guru Joined: 07/11/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1904 |
Mac, do you know if tornadoes turn CW or CCW? You might just be able to stop that tornado with your GVAWT if you could spin it up in opposite rotation with an electric motor just before the tornado hits. You know, opposite forces can cancel each other    Klaus |
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| electrondady1 Senior Member  Joined: 12/02/2009 Location: CanadaPosts: 208 |
here's one mac http://www.usvawt.com/cgi/windpower.cgi |
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| MacGyver Guru Joined: 12/05/2009 Location: United StatesPosts: 1329 |
Tink Having been through a tornado INSIDE my RV, I would love to be able to counteract one's spinning winds with yard art. Unfortunately, a tornado is caused by ice and water falling from miles high, creating what is called a downburst. As the mass of water droplets and ice crystals plumet to earth, they increase in size, number and speed and there's just no place to go except to form a vortex down where the low pressure is (ground), much like a tub of water exiting through the drain. In the northern heisphere, tornados spin counterclockwize and in the souther hemisphere, clockwise, due to the west-to-east rotation of the planet; or is it the other way around? 
Since posting this, I've redesigned the blade. I'll build a SVAWT (small-ish) and install the new blade to see how (if) it works and get back to y'all. I know VAWTs are basically yard art and I know I swore I'd never build another one, but this one actually works and you gotta admit, VAWTs simplify gathering wind power by a factor of 'several' when compared to items like yawing, slip rings, angular momentum on spinning blades as the machine yaws, etc. . . . . . Mac Nothing difficult is ever easy! Perhaps better stated in the words of Morgan Freeman, "Where there is no struggle, there is no progress!" Copeville, Texas |
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| MacGyver Guru Joined: 12/05/2009 Location: United StatesPosts: 1329 |
electrondady Thanks for the Link. I checked it out and their power calculations seem rather low, but maybe they're using something like a Cyloturbine. I'll do my own calcs once I've got one flying and post the results on the 4m. My design creates high torque and I'm going to rely on a transmission to extract work. I know, I know . . . save all the trite comments. . . . . . Mac Nothing difficult is ever easy! Perhaps better stated in the words of Morgan Freeman, "Where there is no struggle, there is no progress!" Copeville, Texas |
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| MacGyver Guru Joined: 12/05/2009 Location: United StatesPosts: 1329 |
The Day Swiftly Approaches As primised, I'm building a VAWT of ginormous perportions. Originally, when I tossed up this post, I was considering making one, which was only 30 inches in diameter. All that has changed, since I bought a new crackerbox welder. The new design will be 10 feet in diameter and 3 feet tall. It will sit approximately 8 feet off the ground. The chickens will, I'm sure, delight in hiding beneath it. The plan is for this puppy to drag a 3KVA alternator with grid-tie. I'll start it soon, as I'm just finishing up the final this and that on my new house. Driveway rock, an extension over my tornado shelter and re-attaching of my metal carport are all the projects left before I can resume play; making wind toys. I'll post as soon as I have some cool pictures to share. . . . . . Mac Nothing difficult is ever easy! Perhaps better stated in the words of Morgan Freeman, "Where there is no struggle, there is no progress!" Copeville, Texas |
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Downwind Guru Joined: 09/09/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2333 |
Good to hear you didn't get swept away in the last Texas tornado. I think you have wishful thinking to expect 3Kw output from a 10' dia vawt, as you wont get that from a 10' hawt which is far more efficient with using wind energy than a vawt will ever be. Im not sure how you intend to grid tie the mill, but it sounds good until you try to do it, allowing for mill loading required and compliance with grid system regulations it becomes not so easy. I must say 10' will be ginormous for you considering your many past builds. Will you use coroflute blades for this build? Pete. Sometimes it just works |
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| MacGyver Guru Joined: 12/05/2009 Location: United StatesPosts: 1329 |
Pete Yes, I find myself spending more and more time 7 feet underground in my below-ground tornado shelter as storms pass by lately. What you don't see here is that my VAWT is like no other you've ever seen. The rules will likely have to be re-written for this design. Without going into detail much, imagine, if you will, four 'paddles in the wind' each 3 feet tall and 5 feet long, centered about a vertical axis. Yes, I will likely be using either Coroflute or Styrofoam as the blade material. All it has to be is light; strength in this case, is not an issue. Like I said, this one is "out of the box" engineering, so you'll just have to wait for the pictures and dialogue. The plan is to use electric fork-lift, deep-cycle batteries as a storage facility. For things here on the farm, I'll use the electricity directly as a dump load for various 'heating' applications. Like I've told folks before, here in Texas, I have continuous DAILY wind of from 12 to 20 knotts, so that's one hurdle I don't have to jump. As for my usual "tinsey-weensy" builds, I will be using a trailer hub (with tapered Timpkin bearings) as the bertical axis. It's off-the-shelf and all I have to do is weld it into place. That's about all the "machining" I'll have to do, except for fashioning a few pulleys. The size here is for sure a break from my traditional builds, but then again, the reason I'm doing this is to show folks they can get HUGE much more easily than one might imagine. I hope someone with even more room will take my idea and make a VAWT of perhaps 50 foot diameter! VAWT design has typcally been shunned, because of it's poor output capabilities. This design changes all that and makes use of "turbulent" ground-level air. The need for a high tower, building permits and such are all thrown out the window with a ground-level VAWT. If push comes to shove, you could actually claim it as "Yard Art" and probably get away with it in a city, where a traditional "windmill" might not be permitted.. . . . . . Mac Nothing difficult is ever easy! Perhaps better stated in the words of Morgan Freeman, "Where there is no struggle, there is no progress!" Copeville, Texas |
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| MacGyver Guru Joined: 12/05/2009 Location: United StatesPosts: 1329 |
Sidebar That 5th star by "Guru" just caught my attention. What's with the 5th star? . . . . . Mac Nothing difficult is ever easy! Perhaps better stated in the words of Morgan Freeman, "Where there is no struggle, there is no progress!" Copeville, Texas |
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| Tinker Guru Joined: 07/11/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1904 |
Hi Mac, That trailer hub idea is something I use for my 'ornamental' VAWT at present. A hint how to use these best: As you know the stub axle is stationary which means its tricky to couple the wind vanes & the generator shaft, What I'd done was to mount the stub axle on a mounting plate which in turn bolts to the top of the mast. The wind vanes attach to the studs where the trailer wheel was to be fitted. But, I drilled a central hole through the stub axle which has a torque transmitting shaft running in it. So, the generator (alternator?) is located below the stub axle mounting plate with the torque shaft driving it. The torque transfer attachment to the spinning hub part can be anything that'll to the job as long as it does not interfere with the central large castellated nut which locks the tapered bearing pre load. You have to come up with a weather seal for that too. Have fun, did you fit a periscope to your underground shelter yet Klaus |
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| MacGyver Guru Joined: 12/05/2009 Location: United StatesPosts: 1329 |
Tink I kinda fibbed a little when I said there wasn't much machining. What I REALLY am doing is: I put the spindle in the 9" lathe and spin it, then drill out a 1/2" hole. I insert a cold-rolled bar of round steel and fillet-weld it to the end of the shaft. This allows me to slip the hold-down nut over everything to tighten the bearings in their race. The other end of the steel shaft is supported in a stationary pillow-block bearing at the top of the VAWT cage. It will all make lots more sense once I get the cage finished and post some pictures. Essentially, all I have is four ginormous, flat, flimsy plastic paddles emersed in a circular flow of wind. I create that circular flow by a system of louvers, each set about the circumfrence of the cage, directing on-coming wind into one quarter of the whole circular pathway. Once the wind is inside, it spins in a circle, exiting through the back sides of the blades on the down-wind side of things. Since only one forth of the circle is facing the wind, I chose to create four individual large paddles inside the cage. It works like a champ! To stop the whole contraption dead in its tracks, all I have to do is toss a blanket up against the windward side, covering the inlet vanes and everything grinds to a halt. What this "windmimll" does that is so different is, instead of emersing a pitched blad in a laminar fluid flow, I change the flow to a vortex and emerse a flat blade in the circulating wind stream. Know anything about that 5th star on our avitars? . . . . . Mac Nothing difficult is ever easy! Perhaps better stated in the words of Morgan Freeman, "Where there is no struggle, there is no progress!" Copeville, Texas |
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| fillm Guru Joined: 10/02/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 730 |
The 5th Star is known as the "Betz Star" , it is not earned by post counts but is awarded to people who have over the years at TBS, have come up with the " Totally Unbelievable Idea " More so , the "Betz Star" gets awarded to VAWT builders and designers....
Do you think you have earned this status... Yet ? PhillM ...Oz Wind Engineering..Wind Turbine Kits 500W - 5000W ~ F&P Dual Kits ~ GOE222Blades- Voltage Control Parts ------- Tower kits |
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| MacGyver Guru Joined: 12/05/2009 Location: United StatesPosts: 1329 |
I'm next! Ppplease, Eddie! . . . . . Mac Nothing difficult is ever easy! Perhaps better stated in the words of Morgan Freeman, "Where there is no struggle, there is no progress!" Copeville, Texas |
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| MacGyver Guru Joined: 12/05/2009 Location: United StatesPosts: 1329 |
Ginormous VAWT Update Wouldn't you know it? I'm finally ready to build my proof-of-concept VAWT and Texas gets burried in an ICE STORM: 
and 
I find myself spending my days just keeping warm in front of the wood stove. It's supposed to let up in a few days and when it gets warm enough in my shop to work, I'll get on with the first of a few VAWTs, which I'm sure will be to everyone's delight. This project has been back-burnered for a longer-than-expected time; sorry. I think I let it slip in another post, but THIS VAWT has a flat, non-aerodynamic blade, in fact four of them, housed inside a squirrel-cage design, which "twists" the wind from any direction into a vortex within which the blades are stationed. I've actually made this design before (like 40 years ago), but it needs a lot of wind to do any work and there just wasn't enough where I lived in California. Here, I get the winds off the prairie, which are more than enough to drive things wild. This design is perfect for anyone, who has lots of open land and daily wind. It can be scaled up to as large a project as your pocketbook will handle. Stay tuned. . . . . . Mac Nothing difficult is ever easy! Perhaps better stated in the words of Morgan Freeman, "Where there is no struggle, there is no progress!" Copeville, Texas |
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mac46 Guru Joined: 07/02/2008 Location: United StatesPosts: 412 |
Hi Mac, By this discription you and I have talked about this a few years past. I have thought about what you said on and off over time and have a hunch you may be right about this. Ice and snow here also...winter is here. Mac46 I'm just a farmer |
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