I’m a 19 year old engineering student and I live in Belgium, since I was 16 I’m working on extracting power from the wind. The first wind turbine was a school project but since then many changes are made. About a year ago I changed the Delco Remy alternator by the windy nation 500pma. On my wind generator is a 10 foot 3-blade rotor .The rotorblades are made out of 1,5mm aluminum shaped into the Clark Y-profile(NACA 4412). This is done by folding it around a mold and TIG-welding it together. To simplify the making of the rotorblades have a constant chord of 145mm(7.5inch) and a constant pitch (φ=10°). Since I have the windy nation 500, I switched over to a 24V system. Because of the larger diameter, I had to use a timing belt with a ratio of 1,75. The pulley on the pma is tapered so it fitted on the shaft. The wind generator has a furling security which is calculated to start furling at 18mph, to prevent the rpm’s from getting too high. The last few days we had good winds and I have seen 909,8Watt Peak!! Since November 18, I am logging the power output with a watt meter and currently I have already 8,8kWh!!
Great job! Looks like you have a nice working design! I am sure you already know this: I think you could see a dramatic increase in power if you raised your tower ~20 feet above the surrounding tree line in your photo.
Thats the VA number,,You are showing 80.5 watts in the pic,,,Nice build,I wish my first builds would of had furling tails as they might still be standing today..keep up the good work.
@windyguru: Yes, indeed I know that if I doubled the length of the pole, the power would increase dramatically. The only problem is I have a couple of neighbours and I don't wont the windturbine to cause them too much annoyance. @bluejay: on the right you see the actual power produced (80.5W), but on your left you can see the maximum power produced since the start of the measurements(909.8W). Sorry for the unclear foto, but it was a bit dark when I took it
Nice work and it looks like you have the Windtura 500 "dialed-in" very nicely! The belt drive setup appears to be a perfect match for your choice in PMA. Do keep up the great work and keep us posted.
Hello, It's been a few months since I began thinking about connecting my wind turbine to the grid. In the meanwhile I've read a lot about other forum-members who are already connected the grid and have read about their succes or failure. The one thing I am concerned about (using the Sun G inverters) is when the grid falls out, the turbine could possibly destroy itself because there is no power demand of the inverter. That's why I would use a battery as back-up system so the turbine can't go too high in rpm. I'm planning to use a 22-60V Sun G grid tie inverter and I've seen in some videos the inverter holds the voltage very low (about 24V) and only increases in strong winds, so I came up with the circuit as shown below. In low to medium winds, almost all the power produced goes to the grid inverter because the voltage of the turbine<26V. In gusts the power is split to the batteries and the inverter and the Tristar TS-45 charge controller takes care of the voltage not getting too high. Should this setup work, or is the inverter input voltage mostly above 24V? Also I would like to hear the opinion of others whether I should use 1 x 1000W or 2 x 500W inverters? Where do you buy these inverters, from Aliexpress? Thanks a lot, Pieter-Jan
Hello, Yes, it will work and it is a good set up. This is called battery clamping. However you may want to use a 48v battery bank instead of a 24v battery system. Even if you battery bank is at 24-28v your MPPT on the GTI will suffer/be restricted alot. You have to choose between more power to the grid or more power to the battery for this set up. The way this is set up more power will go to the battery bank. You can buy them off Ebay as well. Hope this helps
Hi Leamywind, Thanks for your response! Once the turbine is back up and running, I will order a inverter and then I'll see how much power goes to the grid and if I must change my installation. If it works, I will definetely post some results here! Thanks!
