200 watt wind turbine on tiltover crankup mast

[Peter.N.]

Ah, the rpm, hadn't thought about that.

Biff

I noticed that the hub was less than perfect when I first assembled it, on rotation it was fouling the grease nipple in one place, there was a runout of about 20 thou on it, I managed to screw the nipple in sufficiently to stop it binding but wasn't overly impressed.

I tried to balance the blades by at least getting them evenly spaced but it proved difficult if no impossible, even though I enlarged the somewhat inaccurately drilled holes, when I tightened the bolts, the shape of the blades where they fit in the hub caused them to move back to their original position, there is about a 1/2" discrepancy between the ends of the blades. It seems to run smoothly enough though, the only vibration being when the wind suddenly changes direction.

I had a Lucas 'Freelight' many years ago which was based on what looked like a large car dynamo but with a four pole field, that shook itself to pieces - several times until eventually the bearing failed, it should apparently had a mechanism for preventing it from suddenly changing direction.

The whole system is only designed for an emergency power supply and works well as such, the battery capacity at 24v is 300 ah not 150 as originally stated, I was thinking 48v. I have a 500w inverter but it is not sine wave so not ideal for inductive loads, the 1kw UPS runs the  fridge etc perfectly although the efficiency seems much better with a resistive load.

Peter

[biff]

its a question of how long,,
         your fridge will only run for about 2 hours max before your batteries begin to get hammered,unless you are getting a constant gale.there are exellent posts on this forum which explain how to balance blades.takes a little time but the results will speak for themselves.the wonky unstable effect should mostly clear up during the furl.
    there is also a posts about converting chest freezers to fridges ,which means they run on a tenth the energy of the normal upright fridge.exellent posts and well worth following through.
       your particular turbine is well worth installing properly, your tower is a good start,if you had something like the aeolus 300 i would have considered it a waste of money.the point is,when you have got this one up and running to your satisfaction and tuned your dumpload to do something usefull like waterheating ,then you can move on to greater things and will have no trouble getting your money back when you want to sell.
                     biff.

[Peter.N.]

I ran a large fridge freezer from it for about an hour and it was drawing about 10 amps which I thought was excessive, most standard fridges run at about 100 watts, this equates to about 250! the strange thing is if I put a standard 40w bulb on it, it only reads 2 amps, which I would think is about right. Even at 10 amps it should give me about 30 hours, shouldn't it?

I will try and find the info on blade balancing.

Peter

[billi]

not too sure
 but my fridge freezer needs more than 100 watt   when on ,
 but it goes on and off to keep the temp,  so hard to say how much it actually needs ( perhaps i should find out ,  but  i try to avoid questioning my beer cooler  )

[Eleanor]

I ran a large fridge freezer from it for about an hour and it was drawing about 10 amps which I thought was excessive, most standard fridges run at about 100 watts, this equates to about 250! the strange thing is if I put a standard 40w bulb on it, it only reads 2 amps, which I would think is about right. Even at 10 amps it should give me about 30 hours, shouldn't it?

I will try and find the info on blade balancing.

Peter

Hi Peter. Last year we measured the power usage of a fairly old under the counter type fridge with no clever modifications and it was around 0.7 kWh/day but clearly this will vary with the external temperature. This is an average of 24W over the day but when actually running it did use around 100W so it was off for around 75% of the time. When first switched on it used considerably more. You may well run your fridge for 30 hours at 10 amps but if no charge goes into the battery it will be flat and possibly permanently damaged. As Martin said on another recent thread it's a matter of doing the sums and making sure the battery is topped up regularly enough to provide the power you need (and some!). The general rule seems to be not to discharge them by more than 10-20% of their capacity in order to extend their lifetime and also not to get too far "into the red" as depending on the size and nature of the charging source(s) it can take a long time to fully charge the battery. We try to stick to to 10% but others will do something different. It seems to be normal for most of us to live beyond our means with regard to batteries when we first start out   We decided that PV is better for running a fridge as you get the power when you actually need it   Ha, got there before Billi  

[billi]

  

Ha, got there before Billi 

  not really  i go  now to my fridge and pick another beer 

 bloody nice and cold 


By law i can not speak now any-more   


I never  questioned the fridge

Billi

[martin]

Best of all move with 'fridges is one of two methods, either do without one (not so unthinkable, they've only been "mainstream" for 40 odd years), or use the method much beloved of caravanners - run it off bottled gas! - In a "generate your own electricity" scenario, you probably need to cook, for which bottled gas is a sensible power source, and is also ideal to run a fridge - if you do the sums it's a very pragmatic way of saving the generated electricity for tasks which only electricity can accomplish

[Peter.N.]

As I said at the outset this is only an emergency system and I certainly would not even consider running the batteries flat or even near it without very good reason, I am fully aware of the effect of doing so. I have a very good set of batteries and would like to keep them this way. I thought it was interesting that after running the fridge freezer for an hour continuously (there is no door on the freezer at present ) the batteries were fully charged again in only a few hours with a relatively light wind, so only intermittent charging, the dump load was switching in and out very noisily. I do have a standby diesel generator so in the event of a long power failure I can protect the batteries.

Martin

As we run a B&B life without a fridge and freezer would be a little difficult.

Peter

[biff]

 the fridge was always our worry. we bought a waco 65ltr 3 way fridge,it sits on gas permanently, the pilot goes low when we go on the turbine,if there is any lull in the wind we automatically switch over to the gas in seconds. we found the 12vdc part a bit sore on juice,(our solar reserve bank).we cook on gas and run the system from 2 full size gas bottles which change over automatically ,its the perfect answer for off grid systems. our turbine is a 120vdc x 2kw,with a choice of 3 inverters,,then there is our nixon 5kva geni as backup,very seldom ever need but good to have.our battery bank is one 72v forklift plus a 48vpack making a 120v bank of a mimum 600ah. we never let it get too low.,there is room for improvement and we are currently errecting a garage,26x38 on which we will have a rain harvester system and a 120vsolar system.we also have a toyota 1.5,,48 volt which charges off 2 x 24volt160watt solar panels,it works in the yard  and can also be used for running powertools,its a learning curve and a very enjoyable one.
                         biff

[Peter.N.]

Sounds like you have a good set up there Biff, we do actually have a mains supply, but only since 1968, the supply is pretty reliable here at present, but you never know.

We have bottled gas for our cooker and 47kg lasts us about 6 months, including the cooked breakfasts for the B&B! We don't have full central heating but our oil fired Rayburn heats the water and a few rads, a tank of oil lasts about 12 months, we also have a woodburner so equipped for most eventualities.

We restored an old well in our field last year and are in the process of plumbing it up to the house, just waiting for a local farmer to dig a trench for me, its got to go nearly 200 yards and up about 100'. Its an old stone built well, my expert friend thinks it was sunk in about 1700, we cleared about 2 tons of rubble out of it and it will supply 500 + gallons a day of beautiful clear water - haven't had it tested yet though, Its got to be better than the water that we get from the farm though, that turns grey when we have heavy rain

We also of course have septic tank drainage so we are fairly self sufficient, all we need to do now is grow our own diesel

Peter.

[biff]

hi peter,
      we always wanted a well here, our waste is fed to an eco tank,one that pumps the bubbles through the mass of poo,despite that,it still has to have a drainage area so drilling down to a water table that was hundreds of feet below our tank and our neighbours tank was out of the question,sooner or later,especially after prolonged rainfall the level in the watertable would rise and be contaminated by the tanks.the thing is, you can go and get the water tested and it could be fine,however things underground can change for no reason. we have cases here where families have for years drawn water from wells which were not far from sheep dipping stations,we know the results of that and the heart break involved.good luck on your holidays.
                         biff.
       

[Peter.N.]

Hi biff

We are fortunate to own the field where the well is, its comparativly shallow at 22' but the water is lovely, crystal clear, we haven't had it tested yet but in view of the fact its at the bottom of the field about, which is mainly used for hay and a few sheep there shouldn't be anything there to pollute it, its about 120 metres from the house.

 Our septic tank outfall is about 75 yards away from it , it doesn't have a soakaway is it kept clogging up, so as we are on a hill I extended the outfall pipe so it discharges on the surface, there are a few reeds and a lot of undergrowth there and all the water dissapears by about 30' away.

The water that flows into the well comes from quite far down as its little affected by heavy rain and only rises and falls according to the season, we had about 3' last September when we cleared it out and repaired it and went up to around 7' in the spring, this represents about 400 - 800 gallons a day which I am sure is more than enough for us. It is actually higher now than it was last year, although we have had a very dry summer, I think this is the legacy from the wet winter and spring.

Peter