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Forum Index : Windmills : windmill flying, lets see yours
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| itsandbits1 Regular Member  Joined: 13/08/2010 Location: CanadaPosts: 81 |
here is a small vawt flying. It is going to get a pma soon. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIFwF87K424 this one is maybe going to test the asynchronous motor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gTqX7xE21c |
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Gizmo Admin Group  Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5078 |
Good post itsandbits. I made those links clickable for you. Nice running machine, your getting some good results there. Glenn The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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| itsandbits1 Regular Member Joined: 13/08/2010 Location: CanadaPosts: 81 |
thanks for the help Glenn |
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Perry Senior Member  Joined: 19/11/2009 Location: Posts: 190 |
Looks good. Nice to see some functioning VAWTs. Here's one I made a while back. Bout 100 watts out of an Amatek 30V at full tilt. Hand carved wood blades on it now 48" rotor. 100 watt Here's one of the latest one I've been working on. Getting ready to fly in a month or so. 2.2 Megawatts direct drive permanent magnet. Kinda a political vid but it is all I can release at this point. Wade through the politicians bs'ing and focus on the turbine in the background 2.2 MW |
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KarlJ Guru  Joined: 19/05/2008 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1178 |
only 250 homes? nice one Perry, must have been great  
oh and the VAWT is nice too Luck favours the well prepared |
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Andy R. Newbie  Joined: 07/05/2010 Location: United StatesPosts: 18 |
Here's a vid of a blade tester I made. I mounted a Schwinn Bicycle speedometer to get speed readings but I mis-speak in the video and say, "Tells the speed the winds going". That's not correct. The speedometer tell the tip speed of the blade, not the speed of the wind. That's right, I'm not standing in a 100 MPH wind. LOL! 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiic_kfjtUk |
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| itsandbits1 Regular Member Joined: 13/08/2010 Location: CanadaPosts: 81 |
I've got the same rig I put on my units when I want to calibrate them. For some reason mine only thinks in kph witch gives me mps also so I can do a quick translate to tsr ; ;<) actually you know that is changable, but in Ca. the Govmnt. mandates we think in metric and they monitor our messages. ;<)) The big one got up to 97kph the other day loaded. I like looking at power being made by the public. Its amazing what people come up with |
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| itsandbits1 Regular Member Joined: 13/08/2010 Location: CanadaPosts: 81 |
The big one won't load for me; must be all the bs holding it up. Does the other spin like that pretty regular? |
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| Perry Senior Member Joined: 19/11/2009 Location: Posts: 190 |
I&B, I suffer from the home turbine builders dilemma. Great hobby but no real wind resource to speak of at my house. I mostly just put it up during windy times to log data, generate power curves and do testing (like I don't get enough of that at work) About once every two weeks. When it's windy it spins like a banshee. Perry |
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| itsandbits1 Regular Member Joined: 13/08/2010 Location: CanadaPosts: 81 |
i've made some hawt sets blades out of sewer pipe. i get into a lot of construction sites on my job and get hold of some good stuff( given to me )1 set is three yrs. old now and as supple and bendable as the day they were made; I hear a lot about how brittle they get but it must be the cheap pipe that has the problem. my biggest set was 72" on a big 4hp treadmill motor that I could weld with when it was spinning. I got it too close to another aluminum 65" set I had hammered out on another tower and they both got destoyed. I don't need the power but I want to learn enough that when I do I will know how to deal with it. I put a new paint job on the small set so the neighbours can't complain http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3SZFJsHwbM |
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Big Al Newbie Joined: 06/10/2010 Location: United KingdomPosts: 38 |
Hello itsand bits 1. I'm still researching what I build but enjoyed your videos. I would like to build a vawt and have a few ideas which I want to model this winter b4 shooting my mouth off even more than usual. Now my question -ain't you the guy that had the first Sharp model rotating (after Sharp of course )?? Assuming I'm correct the group I saw your video of this on had several guys who built Sharps and Bayly-Kentfields and were doing some practical measurements on these m/c s. Do you know what became of that work or is it still ongoing ? Best rgds. Big Al Every Day is a school day (even at 67) |
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| itsandbits1 Regular Member Joined: 13/08/2010 Location: CanadaPosts: 81 |
yep, i am thet sad fellow. actually i like to try anything that is interesting and i think i have the pleasure of making the first self sustaining Sharp unit. his always had elastic or string that wound up or stretched and returned and wound up but would eventually break the string or rubber band after winding up. my unit ran on solid nylon weed wacker wire so the pivot had to release every so often. There is one fellow; Jim, that built a functioning Sharps 3 blade unit and is still doing measurements. also sgh7132 on the same site, has also done a considerable amount of simulation work on the same types of units and they have shown that as a type the concept is good. I am confident that the sim work he is doing is valuable as it mirrors what I have found in real world testing for the modelling we have. these wings I have developed show excellent results on the pole and in the sim but his testing is two stages behind because he has a lot of demand on his computer time. I think the lift wing is the way to go for vawts because of the low weight of the wings. sgh 7132 has some good sims posted on the site under spinoff results |
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| itsandbits1 Regular Member Joined: 13/08/2010 Location: CanadaPosts: 81 |
should have tied it down but the shock absorbers worked then it snowed |
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Downwind Guru Joined: 09/09/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2333 |
Well watching that for 3 minutes made my eye balls giddy. 
Pete. Sometimes it just works |
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GWatPE Senior Member Joined: 01/09/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2127 |
Hi Pete, there is an interesting sound track as well. I am waiting for the big brother windmill that lights a bit more than Xmas lights. I think that some performance data would be in order now. I suppose the white stuff won't interfere with recording data too much. Gordon. become more energy aware |
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| itsandbits1 Regular Member Joined: 13/08/2010 Location: CanadaPosts: 81 |
there's always someone bigger and that's not the point, I didn't know the site was for a certain sized unit or a certain type? If I short the leads on the motor and it runs up and down with the wind just the same as with the bulbs hooked up; I have shown that also, what would you rather look at? a pair of twisted wire or a string of bulbs? these are simply proof of concept units and as such have done a pretty good job. The wings, I developed myself, found out what the limitations of the standard shapes were and designed these to overcome those problems; hard starting, lack of power in all but certain tsr, and came up with these, and they are excellent; see the simms on vawt.net or just take the time to watch them run with these things in mind. the fibreglass struts work; to a point, I need to mount them without drilling through but they were just for this test. I may gang them up for the real unit. The motor puts out power and puts a load on the wings and the pole is more than adequate to hold this size unit. I will have some mags in my hands this week and will start the alt construction. It's going to be a slow go because the business is keeping me pretty busy. This is not a cookie cutter unit and I really am enjoying the learning curve:<) So much more to learn though. Lloyd |
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Tinker Guru Joined: 07/11/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1904 |
Lloyd, the point is that one either builds a windmill just for the fun of doing it or one builds one with the aim of it generating some useful power. What you have shown so far slots nicely into the 'just fun' category. When shorting the leads has no visible effect on the spinning windmill (or the temperature of the leads) it tells you that its producing negligible power. Maybe enough to light a string of Christmas lights but that's it. If, on the other hand, a short at the leads stalls or markedly reduces the RPM then you can assume the machine is capable of producing some useful power. By useful I mean that hooking up a battery to collect & store that power might be worthwhile. Klaus |
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| itsandbits1 Regular Member Joined: 13/08/2010 Location: CanadaPosts: 81 |
I'll agree to a point. It also can mean that the wings have the power to power through the load put on them which is what you strive for in designing them. you can stall any system by demanding too much of it and power generation is always a balancing act between what is available in the wind and what you can extract without stalling the system. Whether you do it for fun or for "real" or "usefull" power is not to me the point. I don't think the electrons flowing through my bulbs would like being called not usefull:<) And after a unit that only starts producing "usefull power at 4mps has sat idle for a month; and now attach a cogging motor to the unit and see if it will even start, I imagine the power to light 100 leds or more would be quite welcome. And yes, it does put power into batteries for storage also; that's the nature of power, it doesn't care where it goes,if it can, it will;<) I think though that what you want to compare is quantities of power, and I readily agree this unit will not compare in output power that most of the users of this sight talk about, . Not even close and again that is not the point. I never did represent my units in any particular way other than that they were test beds for the wings and now that I have some mags coming I will put together a unit that I can stall the wings out with. It will still run and put out power when everything else is sitting still and put out power that you can use, maybe to jump start a unit that needs 4mps to start, I've done that many times. |
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| Downwind Guru Joined: 09/09/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2333 |
IB1, You sound a little defencive, i can understand that, but when you come to extracting some useful power from the wind and working on the model you have, then scale it up, it will look like a hurdy girdy from a side show. Also to reach cutin of a battery it takes a reasonable amount of rpm to achieve that, and because you are able to produce power dont necessarily mean you will have large amounts flowing into the battery. The reason is once you reach cutin you then need the mill to be able to increase in rpm to be able to produce higher amperage to flow into the battery. With most Vawts it is hard to get enough rpm to achieve this, and is why the comments of ok to power your Xmas lights but might not be so practical in the real world of producing usable power. The comments are not intended to be negative to you but constructive. There is a hell of a lot to be learnt from building a smaller scale mill as you have done, but once you scale it up the results change fast. You should look to get the flex out of your mill as with time metal fatigue will develop and it will self destruct. Pete. Sometimes it just works |
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| Tinker Guru Joined: 07/11/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1904 |
Hear, hear Pete. I have learned that the hard way when I started tinkering with the Lenz II design.
IMO, having widely spaced bearings in a frame and wings of some sort whizzing in between them at frightening RPM's is just asking for problems. There is no simple way to make a frame stiff enough and yet light enough to get it up onto a mast without having to hire a big crane. And I'm talking of a sub 100W wind generator here. Been there, done that - up to the hiring a crane bit where I gave up on this idea 
What *does* work is a central hub, like a trailer hub, with arms attached that angle up and down to hold wings at a reasonable distance. The 'arms' ought not to be steeper than around 45 degrees from horizontal up & down, to be sufficiently rigid. This means for really big wings they are getting quite long. Doing it this way allows for more wings to make up for what's lost in their area from the taller ones used with the two widely spaced bearings method. I run 5 wings, turning on a 1.5m diameter at the moment. The present wings are too small for the wind hereabouts but look promising for some 24V battery charging power once I get the bigger ones finished. The nice thing is this mill turns relatively slow, driving a 1:6.3 planetary gearbox. Cutin comes at about 60RPM at the wings. Later on I'll be trying a AXFX generator to see if its better than the washing machine motor. I realize it'll never get close to the output of a HAWT of similar size but nobody yet had any negative comment about that slow turning contraption poking just above my roof here in the middle of suburbia. Klaus |
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