Homemade Wind Turbine Flies!

air

Some time ago I purchased a set of Hugh Pigotts Axial Flux DIY wind turbine plans from http://www.scoraigwind.com.
I dont have a suitable site myself, living in an urban semi-d so I passed the plans onto a friend and he built a turbine over the last year or so.
It spun for the first time this Sunday.
At this point, all that is left is to purchase the battery bank, dig a trench for the cable and do some wiring around the inverter and dump loads.
I will post full information on parts used including costs and sources as I have them.



Close up of Permanent Magnet Generator - Wound for 48V and employing 24 magnets mounted on 12in steel discs.

Tower is approx 13m in height, no real obstructions to the southwest for about 15km. Tower is easily raised and lowered using a tractor and a wire rope.


The tower foundation has about 3.5cubic metres of concrete and has lots of steel in it. It is planned to install a larger turbine than the current 2.4m next year.

Mods, if I could be allowed edit this post for an extended period, I'd like to get a decent amount of info into it.

sundula

hope you had your turbine up last night you would have got some serious test conditions

Takeshi_Kovacs

Nice one air... keep the pics and info coming..
Just bought the Scoraig plans as well, so hopefully will get round to building as well..
Be nice to know where you sourced the gear for this, i.e. magnets, wire, e.t.c.

Diyguy01

:rolleyes: hello i am just wondering can you charge a 12V car batt. with it?
also did you use a car alternator? I am thinking of making one.

thanks

Takeshi_Kovacs

Diyguy01 wrote:

:rolleyes: hello i am just wondering can you charge a 12V car batt. with it?
also did you use a car alternator? I am thinking of making one.

thanks

His turbine is wired to produce 48 volts, so you would need a fairly large resistor in series (3:1 ratio, but that would be wasteful of energy, unless your resistor is used to heat water). You could also just put 4 x 12 volt batteries in series, and they would charge away...

Definitely get Hugh Piggots turbine plans, they are a gold mine of information, he lists out every possible component that you would need...
Also try for www.otherpower.com
for some diy turbines with lots of pics..

starman100

Excellent Air! I am looking forward to more updates as building one of Hugh Scoraig's wind turbines definitely forms part of my 5-Year-Plan.......... Corner set aside at the bottom of the garden and all that - I'm a few miles out of town on a detached site so hopefully I can put up a mast 30' high or so.

Do you need stay wires for your pole or is it embedded in the foundation? What type of braking do you have for high winds?

What type of blades are you using? Home-made (wooden) or GRP? I was thinking of making some master patterns so I can fabricate my own fibreglass blades (I have a good bit of experience in GRP).

Looks a lot beefier than the one I saw in B&Q last weekend

air

Apologies for not updating this sooner, I'm hoping to get to take plenty of new photos over the weekend.
At present there are 3 guy wires about 2 thirds of the way up the narrower section of piping. However in recent high winds, the turbine has been seen to kick occasionally causing a lot of flex further down the narrower section of the upper tube. A further set of 3 guys will be added further down to help steady it up.
The blades that are running at the moment are nylon moulded ones, however their root is only 100mm in width or so as against the 150mm or so recommended by Hugh for good startup. My friend also has a set of carved wooden blades on hand and he's hoping to try them out soon to compare the startup.
The guy that carved the blades said they took him a day each, although he made them out of some hardwood (teak I think) - total overkill for the application. I think making up some master patters would be a great idea tbh. I bought the nylon ones off a guy in the states that was doing the same thing. Once you get the initial aerofoil right it should be plain sailing from there.

starman100

Any more updates on this?

How's it coping with the recent storms? :eek:

air

The wires connecting the coils to the rectifiers burned out two weeks ago. My friend used standard wire instead of wire with high temperature insulation as specified. We're going to rewire it with larger wire and recast the stator.
I'll update the thread with more info in the new year.

Takeshi_Kovacs

air wrote:

The wires connecting the coils to the rectifiers burned out two weeks ago. My friend used standard wire instead of wire with high temperature insulation as specified. We're going to rewire it with larger wire and recast the stator.
I'll update the thread with more info in the new year.

Any estimates on what power ye were producing?