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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 |
I have absolutely nothing to be defensive about, by the tone the thread has has taken it seems the other way round. From where I started i thought some one would actually take a picture of their unit; good bad, or, ugly, and post it, and I hope everyone will be as lenient with theirs when they start one. If you look back at my comments ; over and over I have stated the purpose of the; "hurdy gurdy" arrangement and with each new person that jumps on board this gets ignored; I skim sometimes too 
As far as usable power, I have discussed that also, the last comment by Tinker takes care of the metal arrangement, it's the same for hawts; with lift wings on there you wouldn't need to be hoisting all that weight up there, but to each there own. and as to the slower turning vawt issue, which Tinker has solved by gearing up, by building a pma that is "efficient" at lower speeds, we are able to extract significant power from them in the 100-300; or higher in some cases, rpm range; with the good diy lift ones in the 2-250rpm area. They have to be much larger of course with more expensive mags for the output but it is doable. And by using lift wings are able to pull into the 1/1/2-2 tsr range where the large wing surfaces give you the power to extract. The drag units like the lenz; yes it is when it's working, c rotor and, sav, are limited to about .7 tsr if they are really matched well and need to be heavily built to withstand the forces they encounter because they need to have such large heavy blades. Again, to each their own. I really don't mind constructive advice or criticism but some of the commenters put their own bias on the subject and then call me names for doing this myself. HUH, |
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Perry Senior Member  Joined: 19/11/2009 Location: Posts: 190 |
Hey Lloyd, I'm kinda a fan of smaller turbines used as test beds. Can't beat them for low cost and ease of usability. I can put my little 100 watt Ametek unit up on a 20 ft pole in 5 minutes then pull it down at the end of the day. Looks like your intent is to optimize your wing profile at this point and not so much the mounts. Do you collect data in any way? What type of power do you get vs. windspeed? How do you compare one profile vs. another? At least, what windspeed do you hit battery cut in voltage at? You are making claims about this turbine producing when HAWT's sit there unable to produce, and assumptions that cogging generators on them will cause them to possibly not spin at all and I think those comments ruffle some feathers unless they are backed up by data. The flying washing machines comment didn't help too much either
Maybe I'm misinterpreting and I really don't care about the pissing contest stuff but the data part, yes, that is interesting. Perry |
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| VK4AYQ Guru  Joined: 02/12/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2539 |
Hi Loyd I like your hobby concept and realize that it a just for fun project and I am sure that it whirling and wobbling its way demonstrates to the uninitiated the concept of wind power and its potential, and you never know that if one day you may fan a spark of interest in a young genius to work on the full size concept. The ongoing refinements to structure will come from minor disasters and the need to power something more than some flashing leds, so don't get disappointed if some throw snow balls at the concept but take it as a encouragement to develop the machine to the point of usefulness. Even if it would produce enough power to run your transistor radio in time of power outage. I am a real fan of VAWT and have made them useful many years ago, unfortunately they suffer from size, to get useful power output, however some of the new innovations using composite high efficiency design are re inventing the usefulness but still a way to go. Keep up the good work. All the best Bob Foolin Around |
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| itsandbits1 Regular Member Joined: 13/08/2010 Location: CanadaPosts: 81 |
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| itsandbits1 Regular Member Joined: 13/08/2010 Location: CanadaPosts: 81 |
Thanks for the input Perry I only make statements based on this forums members own continual complaint/comment and striving to overcome the cogging that they experience to the point of totally redesigning a motor to get around this and their own statements in reguards to windspeeds needed before the unit will even spin and it is common fact that a vawt will be producing energy, albeit not in the range the howling gale types express as usable power. I'll stick by my statement that the vawt will be spinning producing power; and I don't care if it is only to charge your battery in the camper so you don't have to run the gen at night, or power a few xmas lights; put one on a shack in Haiti or some other like place that has no power of any kind and see how much ONE led light would be welcomed. My unit starts a cogging magnet type motor with a load of the 36 3v leds hooked up in series then parrelled to 6 v load it and that at .5mps wind speed will spin up to 40rpm. They are 45" dia and 42" tall. In 1mps they are at 85-90 rpm and the lights start up and at 1.5mps, 100-105rpm are bright. from there on up to 350 in 6mps they are just BRIGHT. All the while the wings power up and down with the wind speed effortlessly whether the wires are hooked to a low battery or crossed. I know the advice and comments are always meant in the kindest way and take them that wayI can't count the number of times I have quoted or referenced something people on this forum have done/accomplished, I have 7 sights in my bookmark file and 4 of them need to be translated but I really enjoy seeing what everyone is doing and you would not believe the large community of wind and alternative energy users or wannabees there are in the world. My magnets are in transit right now at the brokers, and I have detailed my plan to build a large dia. axial flux using 2x1/2x1/2 n42 neos on a 15" dual rotor multi phase setup with some efficient coils to get cutin at 100rpm, and 36v. I have a private test being done on Steves sim at vawt.net to fine tune the wings I have designed and the plan is to start with the existing wings and close the gap till it stalls. I'll get some good info to go on from there to let me know how big I need to go with the wings on the full size unit. I might pull the dia in a bit but I doubt it. As these are experimental wings I don't know exactly where they will end up but The version before these did excellent and these are better so we'll see. |
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| Perry Senior Member Joined: 19/11/2009 Location: Posts: 190 |
Hey Lloyd, You really need to get some cheap multimeters to get a feel for what your system is putting out. You can get a couple for 20 bucks which will really improve your feeling for what is going on. Remember, 36 LED's consume about a watt of power so not much battery charging or not running the generators at night there. Your alt sounds interesting and quite ambitious. I assume it is an AX-FX style. Here is the one I built and it sounds similar. Mine is a 12 incher but my mags are N45. It's wound for a 24 volt cut-in at 125 rpm. Zero cogging. 
I think I can get a reliable 800 watts out of it. If you intend to run at the 7 m/s point in Steve's sims your rotor is going to have to be about 10 ft wide by 13 ft tall so if you aren't thinking about reliable ways to manage a rotor that big now you will have to pretty quickly. Perry |
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MacGyver Guru Joined: 12/05/2009 Location: United StatesPosts: 1329 |
Lloyd & Crew I've been lying low for a time simply because I no longer have my machinery available to build stuff (courtesy of a divorce which, by the way is going VERY well--97 days and counting!). At any rate, what I'm seeing here is the old David and Goliath thing once again. It's like comparing a high rpm Honda engine to a low rpm Nordberg engine. They both produce power, but one is high speed and depends on braking power developed from higher rpm, while the other is more on the shaft horsepower end of things, running slowly, but with lots and lots of raw power. A VAWT would be the Nordberg and a HAWT would be the Honda by comparison. Each have their place in the overall scheme of things. Perhaps, if you can wait another 90 days or so until I get my shop back into operation, I could build and post a small axial-flux design that I've cooked up in the meantime and you could simply gear it up and use your VAWT blades to drive it. The axial flux design allows for zero start-up torque, so it would work well with a VAWT and although belts, chains or gears rob power, it would at least let you see what is necessary to produce some "meaningful" power while you work out the details of your blades. The alternator is key here, and the axial flux design is the easiest to build and run of all the designs I've seen here to date. My new design is built mostly from "off the shelf" stuff. The only 'fancy' tool you need is a welder and welding can be outsourced reasonably cheaply, so it's really not that much of a hinderance. I think if you had a reliable alternator that you could whip up and use, it would allow you to pursue your passion, which seems to be the lifting wing section you've developed. Hope that helps you out. Keep plugging away, you'll get 'er done sooner or later. I'll be glad to help where I can, but for another 90 days or so, my hands are a bit tied! . . . . . 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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GWatPE Senior Member Joined: 01/09/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2127 |
Hi Lloyd, too often in our efforts to perfect our windmills, we have to offer out our designs to peer review and public scrutiny. Constructive crique is useful and modifys our ideas, hopefully to move forward. Objective data provides a way of gaining peer respect and allows a mechanism to track improvements and flaws in the design refining process. To be frank, lighting LED's, or light globes is not objective, and will bring out the negative responses. If you were to however, provide measured data, then you may still get negative responses, but at least positive comparisons could be made. I do not have any windmills that cog. My latest windmill alternator, not completely unlike Perry's, 3phase 9coils [150 total turns, hybrid coils with cap doubler MPPT], with 24 x N38 x 50mm x 12.5mm round magnet disks has a 24V battery cutin of about 60rpm at about 1m/s, and at 3m/s 100rpm produces around 20W. By 3.5m/s 120rpm, power to the battery is about 60W. My windmill is a HAWT with a 3m rotor. Peak power is around 1000W, and max rpm has been recorded at 175rpm in the 24V config. Top end windmill Power and rpm is limited by the furling and loading. My windmill can produce much more power than my house can load, at times, so I have a 1000W heater that contains the battery within max voltage limits. Today has been a day that the dump load is operating. I don't have any U-tube video, but my avatar is my first windmill and Graphs of my windmill performance and pics of them are scattered throughout threads on this forum. I hope you take Perry's advice, and get some cheap multimeters, or better still, a data logger. It is only since I have an accurate, fast response anemometer, and improved the rpm, current and voltage sensing used in my data logging, that my confidence in my own windmill's performance is so high. It also pays to check empirical performance data against the newtonian physics. Gordon. become more energy aware |
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| itsandbits1 Regular Member Joined: 13/08/2010 Location: CanadaPosts: 81 |
The thing with this style of alt is the that you can open or close the gap to adjust the power required to run, and i'm going to bring the coils to the outside so some experimental wiring can be made, ala "Jerry Rigged" and such. the german board has tossed that one around quite a bit, and so has vawt.net and the concensus for vawts is?. But I am going to make a platform I can test a lot of ideas because I don't need the power but I am determined to make something that can be duplicated and is my own design and usable on different platforms. I am drawing from information donated from a lot of different donors and hope it doesn't become too much of a bastard son but its like the wings; a platform for expirementation to follow. Nice looking unit by the way Perry, are all the wires accessible or just the phases? Lloyd |
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| itsandbits1 Regular Member Joined: 13/08/2010 Location: CanadaPosts: 81 |
We have a thread on the vawt.net site called 5 watts for $25. It is a group to design a vawt that can be donated by individual or companys to the haitian relief effort that we have a prototype flying of now. this is a very usefull unit for the purpose it is intended and as i have stated over and over: I am not comparing vawt production to hawt production and untill I made a declaration recently in ths thread about what I intend to build the only thing I have said is that the Vawt has its place; which I know for a fact. Some people disagree with that and I don't mind that. I will though reserve my right to say lets agree to disagree and move on I think you are missing a 1 there in the rpm for 1000w but I agree it is easy to produce that much with a hawt. I have two units that get too many looks when I leave them up in the city too long so they are on the ground. I experimented with pvc blades till I developed a unit that you could only hear whistle a bit when it got up round 3000 rpm. The sunshine must be different some places because where I live we get some of the highest sunny days numbers in CA. and I have blades that are 3 years old that you can bend in half and not break. But if they did let go, they wouldn't go far; before I learned to tilt the gen. a couple hit the pole for the motor I have the test wings on I have given numbers before but as has been noted; if the motor won't stall the wings out it's a moot point. I'm not saying the unit will only light what it is connected to, I have given shorted and open numbers but that only tells you what the max of the motor output is if you halve it, not what the wings in this configuration are capable of, because they overpower the motor right from start up. I have meters but I can't give numbers out of thin air. I need to get the alt built and the wings on. Lloydo |
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Gizmo Admin Group  Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5078 |
Hey Lloyd, Whats the full address for the vawt.net site? www.vawt.net goes to a parking page full of adverts. Glenn The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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| Perry Senior Member Joined: 19/11/2009 Location: Posts: 190 |
Lloyd, Only the phases are accessible on the outside. It's wired in star configuration internal to the stator Glenn, The site is at www.vawts.net Perry |
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| Gizmo Admin Group Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5078 |
Thanks Perry. I'll add it to my Links page. 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 |
russian page thanks Perry, I keep forgetting the "s" Above should be a link or a picture of the configuration of alt I will need to build by extending the central shaft to get the wings up to clean air Shoot it didn't work but it's on this site anyway . I'll try again later, happy browsing! Miro's got a lot of neat stuff on his page |
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| MacGyver Guru Joined: 12/05/2009 Location: United StatesPosts: 1329 |
itsandbits1 I went to that site you mentioned here and found this Youtube video on that page. If this is the special alternator you're hoping to build, it looks to me that it will cancel unless you can use axial magnetized magnets, but if you do that, your flux return path will be minimal and it will likely not produce much electricity. If you link the magnets using iron cores, the flux won't pass through the coils at all and you'll get nothing. If, on the other hand, the magnets are diametrically magnetized, it will cancel completely and you'll wind up with zero current. It's a difficult design. IMHO you should stick with a proven design and do like I said earlier in this thread; either build it to size or gear it up. The axial-flux design is the only feasible design for your small VAWT from what I can see in your video presentations. There's just not power enough to do much else. . . . . . 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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| itsandbits1 Regular Member Joined: 13/08/2010 Location: CanadaPosts: 81 |
sorry Mac, that's not the one I was saying I was going to do a modified version of. It is on the russian page and I shouldn't call it that cause I don't think their in the federation any more. It is Slovenia, and his name is Miro, He`s built just about every type of vawt there is but I am just using his picture of the inverted design I`ll have to build to get the wings up above the alt. I`ll try to get the link here again.sorry file is wrong but it`s on this siteslov site but it`s just an idea of what i`ll have to do |
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| miroc Newbie  Joined: 12/12/2010 Location: SlovakiaPosts: 4 |
I had to register me to correct any inaccuracies in relation to Lloyd's posts. Firstly - .sk is not Slovenia, but Slovakia, which is quite a substantial difference. And secondly, the location of Slovakia in the Russian Federation is absurd, and never in the past it was not. :-) Sorry for google translation. Miro http://www.vawt.om2cm.sk |
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| itsandbits1 Regular Member Joined: 13/08/2010 Location: CanadaPosts: 81 |
Sorry Miro No historical or ethnic slurs percieved or insinuated by my ignorance of the nature of the Relationship of the Language of the different areas of the world. I based my judgement of the area of the world you live in on the translator that google uses to translate your board. It says it is translating from Slovencina, which would lead me to believe you were posting from The territory I mentioned. I apologize for the insult you may feel allthough coming from a country that does not have the historic troubles certain areas of the world do, I did not foresee creating an international incident by missplacing your blog ;<0 I'm terribly sorry and if there is anything I can do to smooth over this terrible affront please let me know!!! Lloyd |
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| miroc Newbie Joined: 12/12/2010 Location: SlovakiaPosts: 4 |
Ooh, Lloyd no problem. Did you see that my post is with a smile. What do you say to my new alternator? I think the graph is quite interesting. new alternator Miro http://www.vawt.om2cm.sk |
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| itsandbits1 Regular Member Joined: 13/08/2010 Location: CanadaPosts: 81 |
It is a nice unit. looks like a nice construction. I hope you don't mind me using it for an example of the way i plan to make my unit look but with an extended live shaft to carry the wings. You have a lot of power available and it is too bad the price had to go so high but the first ones are always like that . Do you think the construction costs will stay that high? The one I plan to build will be like a baby compared to it. I like the efficiency too:<) Lloyd |
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