small wind turbine home built

[gasmick2]

Hi i have decided to build a small wind turbine fixed to my garage at the rear of the house before paying out for expensive turbine blades i decided to play around with a scrap ceiling fan this having 4 blades
anyway i stripped it down and recovered the front part that held the blades on
I decided to make my blades from 4" round plastic soil stack by cutting to 600 mm in length then placing a peice of tape from corner to corner and jig sawing it out that gave me 4 blades with the required shape to catch the wind i fitted them to my hub and used the old shaft on a bearing and connected it to a 12 ft pole wow it went around that fast it was pulling me over so now i knew that it would work without any costs involved for the experiment
I have now gone up a mode and purchased a 5 blade carbon fibre set with a hub and i have purchased a permanent magnet dc motor
that is used in the states a lot it will produce a voltage witchever way it goes round my plan is to use a bank of special 12 volt batteries
which are available on ebay and i will have a voltage regulator circuit
before the batteries to regulate the charge which should be around 14.5 volts and as the turbine will run day and night the batteries will soon get charged up i will then get 2 or three 12 volt elements and fit them into my hot water copper cyld so any current not needed by the batteries will heat the water even a small amount is better than nothing
i will be using an inverter to transfer 12 volts to 240 volts AC then i intend to run all my lights in my house from my own system i have worked out that all my lights if all on together takes about 600watts
so i will have 6 /110 amp batteries to do the job and even without much wind on odd days they will last a long time
i am also looking at combining solar pannels into the system,
well thats what i am doing but i am at a bit of a standstill at the moment as i am recovering from colon cancer opp, which was succsessfully carried out so i cant wait to get cracking again , and start saving some money on my electric bill

mick

 

[electronicsuk]

Show us some pictures when you're done.

 

[unseen]

Very interesting approach, would it not serve better to feed/sell back to the grid? Or is that where all the expense is with the kits you can buy??

Rob

 

[gasmick2]

hi i have looked into both options and that one is a lot more expensive with you cannot install it yourself as its connected to the grid so you would expect to pay out around £3000 and that takes a lot of recovering
miine will only cost around £450 or thereabouts and i will be storing what i produce so i will be in control, i will make it switchable from mains to my system if any faults develop.
and i have just been offfered a full sign wave inverter that will produce around 3kw @240 volts
if i use it i might be looking at getting a set of forklift truck batteries
which give out about 1500 amp hr so then i will be able to run more than just my lights at times i also have just picked up a constant voltage transformer the guarantees 240v output if the inverter dips below it as soon as i have a working model up and running i will post some pictures if anyone is interested

 

[ColJack]

have you considered using the 12V directly?
if you change all of your lighting to 12V then connect directly to the batteries then you won't have any losses in the inverter..

you would of course need a fairly large transformer and rectifier for when you have to use the mains.. but a car charger might be suitable..
and you'll need to beef up the wiring for the lights as you'll be using higher currents..

there's also the problem of excessive wind to deal with.. does your setup have a brake or a govenor on it to stop or slow the blades in gale conditions? or does it just freewheel?

 

[Steve]

12V LED lighting would be perfect for this application. Perfect combination.

But would need a backup for when there is no wind and the batteries run flat.

 

[big-all]

ok i am no expert
but basic principles must apply

a system that is able to harness the full power off the wind all the time is extremley inneficient
it will be heavy overengineered and waste a lot off energy and at say with 20% wind days will waste most off the energy because off the "heavy system"
much better to aim for a system that will cope with just above the average say 60% that you disconect on high wind days to stop overloading the system but will be an average of say 60% the rest off the time rather than 30%

 

[jeepmadmike]

Sounds like a good project, I plan to build a water wheel generator as I have a stream in my garden!

But I am also looking into becoming a registered installer of renewable energy systems,although costly there is a big advantage, if it is correctly certificated you get paid for all the energy you produce even if you use it rather than return it to the network!!!!

 

[greekstuart]

If the system is set up with an inverter and proper batteries and on a windy site you will be fine.

Have to get over the problem of power surges created by high wind and that takes a little money.

I don't know the US kit you refer to but it should regulate and control the problem.

I think proper and specialised batteries are key.

Stuart the Greek

ok i am no expert
but basic principles must apply

a system that is able to harness the full power off the wind all the time is extremley inneficient
it will be heavy overengineered and waste a lot off energy and at say with 20% wind days will waste most off the energy because off the "heavy system"
much better to aim for a system that will cope with just above the average say 60% that you disconect on high wind days to stop overloading the system but will be an average of say 60% the rest off the time rather than 30%

 

[potjieking]

I'm very much interested in your design type Mike. Im building my turbine from an treadmill motor and got 50v running off a battery drill.Got my blades, batteries, but need some help with the techno bits. I have no controller to regulate the 12v I need. Don't even know what to look for so can't even buy the correct things I need.

Any chance you could give me some advice as i'm in the dark. Need to sort something out soon while we got all the wind.

JT