Home made wind turbines

Lazairus

I have just started making PVC blades for my new wind turbine.

Has anybody else tried making pvc pipe blades?

I had trouble cutting straight with the jicksaw

8 inch diameter pvc pipe and 70 cm in length.

I was also looking at the motor

treadmill motor
or
alternator motor

djpbarry

Moved from Green Issues.

steifanc

Lazairus wrote: »

I have just started making PVC blades for my new wind turbine.

Has anybody else tried making pvc pipe blades?

I had trouble cutting straight with the jicksaw

8 inch diameter pvc pipe and 70 cm in length.

I was also looking at the motor

treadmill motor
or
alternator motor

i would think with a treadmill or alternator moter you wouldnt have egnough poles got generate anything worth while at low rpm

stapeler

There's some good DIY information at http://www.yourgreendream.com/diy_instructions.php which I've been considering for a while.
Also have a look at http://www.otherpower.com/17page1.html and http://www.otherpower.com/otherpower_wind.shtml

RKQ

Great idea.... There was a man at the Ploughing match. He runs a course on making wind turbines, somewhere on the West coast. He had a turbine wings made of plywood - system cost about €600 to make and would heat all your hot water.

quentingargan

RKQ wrote: »

Great idea.... There was a man at the Ploughing match. He runs a course on making wind turbines, somewhere on the West coast. He had a turbine wings made of plywood - system cost about €600 to make and would heat all your hot water.

I think they are running a version of the course by Hugh Piggott whose book on building your own wind turbine is well worth buying.

There is a bloke called Stuart who was one of our lecturers on the City & Guilds wind course in Omagh who builds his own blades and is developing ways to do this. You can see his turbine on the way into Omagh from the south - from memory I think it has produced up to 8kw! He also makes his own generators by winding the coils in a plywood disk and laminating it. Neat.

Lazairus

the idea hear is cheap , hugh piggott is expensive , if a wood blade breaks its harder to replace,.


PVC cheap, very durable and flexable , if it breaks it can be relplaced easily,

laz

quentingargan

Crikey - If a blade breaks, I wouldn't like to be around, PVC or wood! Blades have broken, often while the tip speed is at well over 200mph. It is not a pretty sight:eek:.

You don't design wind turbines with a big IF around what to do when the blades break. During the war, Spitfires flew with wooden blades. Provided they are well made, they simply shouldn't break.

I'm not sure at all about the suitability of PVC. Its plasticiser migrates over time causing its characteristics to change.

bladespin

Lazairus wrote: »

the idea hear is cheap , hugh piggott is expensive , if a wood blade breaks its harder to replace,.


PVC cheap, very durable and flexable , if it breaks it can be relplaced easily,

laz

What if the broken balde hits something or someone?

quentingargan

bladespin wrote: »

What if the broken balde hits something or someone?

See the rest of this news report here...



A farmer has described the shocking moment a 16-foot wind turbine blade smashed through the roof of his home as his family slept inside.
“It was like a bomb hitting the roof of the house. It shattered the tiles and the blade disintegrated itself,” David Campbell told the Belfast Telegraph.
The turbine was one of a batch of 11 defective machines installed on farms in Northern Ireland with the help of European funding provided by the Department of Agriculture.
All 11 of the Chinese-built turbines, sourced from the same supplier, have broken down but the farmers have been left thousands of pounds out of pocket and they complain that no-one is doing anything to help.
Mr Campbell said the turbines, supplied by [deleted by QG] were only operating for a matter of hours before they broke down. He said his turbine “took off of its own accord” one stormy night in January 2007: “It got up momentum with the wind blowing. It went for four hours until about 4am and the three blades came off. One of the blades went through the roof of the house — it cut through it like a chainsaw.
“If anybody had been in line of them when they came off, they definitely would have been killed — the blades are 16 foot long.”

Lazairus

well its not a huge wind turbine, and it located at the back of the shed away from the house, i feel sorry for the horse tho


now problems with sourcing the motor , any ideas,


some say that treadmill motor works fine

any opinions